Comment of Bread and Roses by Ken Loach

In the  English lessons,we studied a very interesting film which is entitled "Bread and Roses".It was directed by Ken Loach,a famous British director.

Here is the summary of the film : Maya who is the main character, is a young Mexican who managed to cross the border between Mexico and the US.She wasn't alone as there were also many Mexican immigrants who wanted to escape to the poverty of their country. But it's not easy to cross the border because there are too many immigrants and the government can’t welcome  them all. Thus theseimmigrants needed smugglers, whose job consists in making  people  cross the border and they ask some money in exchange. Maya’s mother didn’t give enough money thus Maya couldn’t enter in the U.S. The smugglers took advantage of that and they took  Maya away ih their van to go to a flat. Maya was aprisoner of those ugly men. Then one of the smugglers took Maya to a bedroom to rape her. He took a shower before and during this time Maya had an idea to escape : she took the key from the man’s pocket. Afterwards Maya went to apply for a job because she had to earn her living. A black safety officer walked up to d Maya  and he said to her "don’t stay here". Then two Mexican-Americans came and asked Maya if she  didn’t need any help. The black man thought they wanted to annoy her that 's why he said to them to get out of the way.  As a consequence they insulted and made fun of him in Spanish but  he didn’t understand anything!  Thanks to her sister, Maya managed to get a job. Then, she went in the boss’s office and he explained to her what she had to do. After the job- interview with her boss, she suddenly realized she hadn’t the choice and she had to accept the hard working conditions to live. Then, she met a man whose name was Sam Shapiro. He wanted to make a union with all the janitors and he incited them to think about rebellion so as to change their working conditions. Moreover, they learned that 17 years ago, the janitors use to earn $ 8.50 an hour plus health plus sick pay plus holidays and now they earn only $ 5 thus they decided to rebel themselves.

Personal opinion : I really love this film because it taught us a lot of things such as  in the U.S, bosses take advantage of people’s naivety to impose their hard working conditions. You shouldn't believe that this film is only about sad events because there is also funny and happy things  : let’s take for example the moment  when the janitors have  a party. And there are also  love stories...

                                                                                                 Juju