Synopsis

Meche, Yo is a short, dramatic fiction film centering on a young Latina woman, Mercedes, and her mostly undocumented family living in DC. She begins a relationship with a White, Navy enlisted man much to the chagrin of her overbearing, though well-meaning grandmother. Mercedes’ journey helps her gain the confidence to choose between what she wants from life, what her family expects of her, and the limited options she has before her.

In the film, we focus on two developing threads in Mercedes’ life: her grandmother’s increasing demands that she find a more stable source of income that will support the family (and keep her in the fold) and her courtship with a young White man named Gordon. Conflict quickly builds between these two pressures. Mercedes’ daily life is numbing and repetitive: at 21 years old, she is living at home, distant from her withdrawn mother, domineered by her forceful grandmother, and sharing a bedroom with her obnoxious, yet bright younger brother, James. She volunteers in the after school program where she spent most of her time growing up. She is undocumented, but her brother, five years her junior is not. He excels in school where she did not. Her grandmother is fond of rubbing in this very fact—while Mercedes is happy to squander her talents, her responsibility should be in helping support his learning and the family’s financial stability to ensure that James can go to college, even if she was too quick to give up on her studies.

Then one evening, she meets Gordon, a young, White, Navy enlisted man on leave from the Naval base where he is stationed in coastal Virginia. He is staying with his cousin who is stationed at the Marine Barracks in DC. Mercedes decides to continue to blow off her familial obligations (and work) over the next few days, to enjoy the limited time Gordon will have off duty. But it’s only a matter of time before the two worlds, the idyllic one with Gordon that she is tentatively entering and the staid norm of her daily work and home life mired in responsibility, collide.