Cowboy del Amor

The result is a lyrical contrast of two contiguous cultures, worlds apart in their definitions of family and love but brought together by mutual awe and basic human need.

Watching Cowboy del Amor is like sitting in a room with someone who's making funny racist cracks; you can't help but laugh, but you feel sullied by the implicit collusion. For that reason, the film tips over into the camp of tragedy. Or if it is a comedy, it's the Shakespearean kind, where the marriages at the end are utterly unsettling.

Richly amusing and sporadically insightful as it offers an up-close-and-personal view of Ivan Thompson, a self-proclaimed "cowboy cupid" who plays matchmaker between American men and Mexican women.

A 60-year-old eccentric with a knack for self-promotion, Thompson makes an engaging documentary subject. But his plainspoken charm and cornpone shtick can't dispel the film's lingering aftertaste of exploitative condescension.

A well-done, oft-times entertaining documentary as it presents this unique brand of matchmaking that may or may not be the ideal situation for both parties.

Michèle Ohayon falls into the old documentary trap - the illusion that once you've found yourself a lovable eccentric to follow around with a camera, you automatically have a movie.

Ohayon doesn't judge Thompson or his customers, but you don't need to be a Harvard-educated psychiatrist to realize that the bunch of them are dirty old men who treat women as commodities.