El Día De Los Albañiles (Los Maistros del amor)

The Mexican cinema, perhaps the most interesting of Latin America is in crisis. A great crisis. We are in 1976, and after created a number of great filmmakers with the help of the government, Jose Lopez Portillo became the new President and everything changes.
The Mexican cinema has no more subsidies and therefore need to point to a commercial return. So the great directors flee away or try to save themselves in some way. An endless fall for the Mexican cinema that culminates with the burning and destruction of a part of the National Film Archive.
From the 1983, the Mexican cinema arises slowly, but the commercial movies, the "Sexicomedias Mexicanas" and "Cine de Ficheras" are the main productions.
A great exponent of this wave is "El Día De Los albañiles", not because it is the worst or the most stupid but because it takes the idea from "Los albañiles" a drama/thriller of 1976 by Jorg Fons.
Now with all due respect to Ripstein, Jodorosky, Bunel and for all those who come to mind, we must remember that we are to "B Movies Heroes" and this artistic crisis, is good for us, because we have a lot of work. ¡Que viva el Cine B!
We would have much to write about this movie, directed by Adolfo Martinez Solares brother of the most famous Gilberto, but we just concentrate everything in few words: unwatchable comedy, not funny.
We are well used to (so a little 'snob) our Italian comedies of the seventies and so we find hard to appreciate a job that has some points in common with the Italian productions. Contacts represented by popular characters (albañiles, i.e. builders) by tits, nudity and gags. Again with all due respect there is no one of these aspects that works here. Apart the construction workers everything else is poor starting from the women to the gags.
We appreciate the social criticism, the fact that the rich are bad and normal people are good, looking for to make money, in a not legal way, But the story of Juan and Juan played by two stars like Alfonso Zayas and Luis De Alba, isn’t interesting.
The film starts with the images (very sad) of an orgy at a construction site, with the construction workers and nasty women, some elderly, who have fun. Then Juan and Juan conquer the scene, showing in various ways their attempts to make money. Fraud, theft, in which happen to see naked women and some scene slightly soft-core.
The images of the construction site and the soup kitchen added sadness to what is an attempt to make a sexy comedy. The drama and the shady around the rich who exploit the poor (still agreeing on the idea) destroy this story.
All very simple then, but a simplicity that has worked well and that generated several sequels, we'll see, with the pace of the masters of Mexican cinema.

Technical Data Sheet
Original Title: El Día De Los albañiles (Los Maistros del amor)
Alternate Titles: El día de los albañiles
Year: 1983
Country: Mexico
Director: Adolfo Martinez Solares
Cast: Alfonso Zayas, Angélica Chain, Luis De Alba, Miguel Angel Rodriguez, Rossy Mendoza, Maribel Fernandez
Duration: 90 '
Production Company: Frontera Films S.A.