Archbishop of Sydney

Bella

By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
9/3/2008

Films are not something I regularly stretch to in this column, mainly because I don’t have a lot of time to see them. But a real gem is currently playing in Sydney that should be seen by everyone who likes a beautiful story.

 Bella is set in New York and revolves around the drama that overtakes the lives of two people who only know each other through their work at a Mexican restaurant.

Nina, played by Emmy Award winner Tammy Blanchard, is completely alone in the world. An only child, her father died when she was 12 and left her mother crippled by grief. With no extended family she had to bring herself up and care for her mother.

So when she finds out she is pregnant she has no one to turn to for help. We don’t meet her partner in the film, but it is clear that she does not see him as someone to build a life with. He just wants her to “fix” the problem. Nina is also clear that she is not ready to have a child. 

Circumstances seem to reinforce this decision. Morning sickness makes her late for work once too often, and she is sacked. Things just seem to go from bad to worse.

Jose, played by a young Mexican actor Eduardo Verastegui, is the restaurant’s chef and the owner’s brother. He sees the harsh way in which his brother sacks Nina, and follows her as she leaves to offer his support.

In the course of the day they spend together, Nina tells Jose she is pregnant and that abortion is her only way out. She rejects the idea of adoption because it seems an even worse thing to do: to bring a child into the world and then to abandon it to strangers and an unknown fate.

Jose does not pressure Nina. He understands she is vulnerable and struggling with an awful challenge. He also has demons of his own.

Some years before he accidentally ran over a little girl, the only child of a single mother. He refused to flee the scene, even though he had just signed a contract to begin a professional soccer career, and served time in gaol for manslaughter. As he says to Nina, he lost five years of his life, but from the mother of the little girl he killed he took everything she had.

Nina gradually begins to trust him and challenges him to give her a way out. The film ends with him doing just this in an unexpected and beautiful way.

Bella is a moving affirmation of the reality of knowing that when one is a parent it is forever and that children are one of God’s greatest gifts. So too is love.