**5. Conclusion**

Cinema as a "system of representation" is a critical arena of contestation and struggle. Although it has served to reproduce ideologies, it has also allowed the reconfiguration of identities following political, social and economic changes. In this sense, identity as meaning is not fixed. It is an ongoing process. Even the attempt to "fix" it is the result of representational practices that privilege one meaning over others. Nevertheless, this can be transformed, enriched, or subverted, just as the extensive journey of melodrama has shown.

Melodrama has been one of the most significant genre categories that represent Mexican identity. With the first movies, identities were represented following the moral and social codes of the patriarchy, where agency was established by heteronormative male power. With the implementation of a global neoliberal system, representations in melodrama evolved into broader categories and new issues, like loneliness, family crisis, the politics of the body, gender relations and subjectivity. As Patricia Torres [17] points out, we can then recognize that the expansion of the features that define the melodramatic expressions and contemporary melodrama have been re-signified through new discourses and narrative and esthetic resources, delivering a new approach to gender identities (p. 213). Although stereotypes are still present, melodrama continues to question its audience and is still an important narrative structure in the media. Therefore, it is fundamental to understand contemporary Mexican culture.

*Sueño en otro idioma* is a film that reinforces some stereotypes from the Mexican cinema of the Golden Age, such as violence as a characteristic of virility and masculinity, the paternal figure as responsible for feminine decency and the morality imposed by religion. However, the film also challenges the conventions of the genre by addressing gender and sexuality in relation to cultural identity. The characterization of Evaristo and Isauro as indigenous men differs from other characterizations marked by abuse and helplessness. They have agency and are able confront their inner passions in a hybrid context where and the pre-Hispanic the globalized worlds can coexist. Likewise, Lluvia, Evaristo's granddaughter is a woman with agency. She decides what she wants to be and chooses who she wants to share her life with. Although she takes care of her grandfather, she can accept his homosexuality and support his search for happiness.

Mexican cinema operates as a device for social projection and as a mechanism in which our realities are constructed and reworked. *Sueño en otro idioma* shows that the love experience of Evaristo and Isauro reflects a mixed world where modernity and the cosmogony of their origin can coexist. The exploration of Evaristo's subjectivity is an example of an identity in transition in this globalized world. At the same time, the film shows how the old stereotypes that have shaped Mexican culture are no longer useful, particularly when they face the challenge to accept new possible forms of existence in contemporary times.
