Eva Peron

Eva Peron

The movie’s plot as its title suggests revolves around the life of Eva Peron, a woman whose boldness propelled her from a not very privileged background to being Argentines first lady by almost single handedly propelling her husband Juan Peron to the presidency. From rural Argentina, Eva, a striking beauty born to a landlord father and a seamstress mother decides that she won’t settle for the life fate has placed her in and opts to run away from home at the age of 15 with a traveling singer who is her lover. She arrives in Buenos Aires and works hard to become a performer and a prominent one at that but although tremendously intelligent, cunning and courageous; she lacks natural acting talent and doesn’t make it to the stage stardom she had set out to achieve (Lerner, 65-98).

Undeterred to make a success out of her life, she meets Juan Peron an Argentine army officer who with her help rises to become the country’s presidency. Her life takes a mythical twist. Having risen from rural Argentina to the vicinity of power and fortune, Eva doesn’t loose her connection with her origin and is openly contemptuous of the moneyed classes and passionately advocates for the poor. Her relentless advocacy won Argentinean women the right to vote (Lerner, 65-98).

The movie adequately exposes political issues of the time with Eva’s passionate advocacy for the welfare of the less fortunate and especially the rights of women. Juan Peron was a military ruler at a time when America was trying to influence the world with its values and was faced with the issue of curbing the spread of communist influence. Eva’s pretensions towards the moneyed classes and compassion towards the poor was in extension South America’s views towards its neighboring influential superpower (Lerner, 65-98).

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