In the early 1930s, Sergei Eisenstein traveled to Mexico to make a six-part film, Que Viva Mexico, which was abandoned within a few years. The never-shot fourth section dramatizing the Mexican Revolution was to be called “Soldadera” and followed the exploits of Pancha, a young woman escorting her husband Juan, a soldier in Pancho Villa's army. When Juan dies in battle, Pancha takes up arms and replaces him. This scenario is the crux of Bolaños's La soldadera, an homage (whether intentional or not) to the story never told. Famed Buñuel collaborator Silvia Pinal plays the renamed Lázara, whose stoical (but elegant) determination is a match for the dire times. Though Bolaños's sturdy film concentrates on the heroic sacrifice made by the female Villistas, it does so with due honesty. Accompanying the troops and often exposed to the same dangers of the battlefield, these fearless women are nonetheless still subject to the rules of hearth and home. The Revolution never quite goes full turn.