How will Mexicans respond to ‘Bruno’?

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It will be interesting to see how Sacha Baron Cohen’s new movie, Brüno, is received here in Mexico when it launches in cinemas at the end of September.

In Mexico City, we have yet to see the latest effort from the British comedian, but the Miami Herald’s columnist Andres Oppenheimer has -- and he’s not happy.

‘Its main character, an Austrian gay-model-turned-TV-reporter played by British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, makes fun of almost everybody, but is particularly brutal to Mexicans. In his fictional TV talk show, Brüno invites his celebrity guests to sit on top of live men on their fours looking at the floor with a mixture of boredom and resignation. The men resemble the stereotype of Mexican laborers, mustaches included,’ writes Oppenheimer.

In the audio clip below, you can hear Brüno say: ‘Come and sit on our great furniture. These are our Mexican chair people. Demi Moore has two of them in her house.’’

After a year that for Mexico has included a damaging bout of swine flu, escalating drug-related violence and an economic recession, perhaps all Mexicans can really do is laugh at the depiction of their countrymen in what is intended to be a provocative joke.

But how funny will they find it?

‘Mexico’s image abroad has never been worse in recent memory,’’ former Mexican government spokesman JoséCarreño Carlón wrote Wednesday in the daily El Universal.

‘You don’t see any more proud, romantic or witty Mexicans in stereotypes abroad. You can’t find the image of a modernizing Mexico ... only images of broken Mexicans, willing to be used as things.’’

Stay tuned to La Plaza for Mexican reaction to the film when it is released in September.

See the trailer for ‘Brüno’ here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City