Missing jose: the day California lost its Latinos, and cried about it.

Early on in the new film A Day Without a Mexican, a senator's wife picks up two Latinos at a street corner and hires them to paint the family mini-mansion. When the senator explodes--is she trying to ruin him politically?--the manicured fake blond snaps back that with the budget he gave her, she could only afford "illegals." Later, in a TV interview, the senator says he has never employed undocumented workers, and furthermore, he adds, his maid is legal--she used to work for the Reagans.

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It's that hypocrisy that makes A Day Without a Mexican so enjoyable to watch--even as you wish the filmmakers were more bent on political change than on making Latinos the next model minority. In the film, a fog rises up at the California border and Mexicans and all Latinos mysteriously vanish (couldn't they just have gone on strike?). With a third of the population gone, millions of cars are left in the street without their owners, the interim governor's wife has to squeeze her own OJ and the Border Patrol combs the classifieds for new jobs. A ranch owner watches his unpicked crop shrivel in the heat and people of color are besieged by the question of the day: Are you Mexican?! Sadly, the Anglos in power come to see just how much they need Latinos, but there's little suggestion that anything else has changed.

The film is educational (20 percent of California's teachers are Latinos, according to one film factoid) and downright comedic (ever notice that the sombrero resembles the shape of a UFO?). The movie also comes at an apt time. The war on terror has politicians talking as if national security takes priority over the country's economic reliance on immigrant labor. It doesn't. And in an election year when both political parties are begging for the Latino vote, the movie reminds us again of how little is offered in return.

We talked to Yareli Arizmendi, who co-wrote the script and also played the movie's protagonist: the sole remaining Mexican. Arizmendi, married to the movie's director Sergio Arau, is probably best known for her acting role in the film version of the book, Like Water For Chocolate.

Without Latinos, California falls apart. I like that premise but would it really happen like that?

If you take one-third of the population of anywhere, everything is going to collapse. They're trying [in the film], but they cannot go on with their own work because there is no child-care, the schools are a mess, there are teachers missing, all the support personnel is missing.

The senator brings people who are on welfare to the field, but obviously these are untrained people; they have never been near a field. They're trying to pick oranges and doing a really lousy job of it. And the prison warden says, "I've got you some prisoners," and of course the minute they get there, they run.

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Let me stress that it is a comedy.

Is the film saying let's pay Mexicans a living wage or let's get them out of these jobs?

No, I think the main point is to understand how the life that you lead is dependent on a support structure that at the base is a lot of Latinos who are doing the jobs. And not only that, but Latinos are at all levels as professionals everywhere and as politicians as artists and scientists. So the main point of the film is just open your eyes and be aware that these people are contributing with their work, with their knowledge, with their energy, to making the state the fifth largest economy in the world.

We open our eyes and then what?

Well for one, I would say recognize the way we have shaped society--that employers are as illegal as the illegal workers that they employ and so are the consumers of the goods produced by the illegal workers. So we kind of bring it up [in the movie] as, stop being hypocritical about that. We're exploiting people in order to maintain a level of lifestyle that probably we wouldn't have if we didn't have [illegal workers]. We're promoting low-wage labor.

Would you like to see immigration policy changed?

One of the big complaints about using undocumented labor is that it brings down the salaries for everybody else because there's people that are willing to work for cheaper. Well, don't pay cheaper salaries and legalize everybody!

Some billboards for the movie that said on "May 14, there will be no Mexicans in California" were moved because of complaints. What happened?

Sav-On [drugstore] were the ones who said, "We've been getting these people coming in and asking what that is and we're afraid that riots are going to break out and they're going to deface the property" and we're like, "What?!" I mean there's this paranoia in L.A. and essentially it's because there had been a Latino woman that had come in and said, "You know that is offensive. What is that? An initiative from Sacramento to kick us out?" That's what she thought it was.

What does it say to you that a Latina thought a message like that would come from Sacramento?

That we walk around with such fear and paranoia and are made to feel that you are here conditionally. That has got to stop because you cannot be a participating player and citizen really with rights and responsibilities if you're tiptoeing around.

There are people who have criticized the movie saying it focuses on Mexicans and Latinos as low-wage earners. What's your reaction?

It doesn't. It doesn't. For one, let's look at the reality: there is a vast number of the Latino population in the service industry not only as busboys. They work in the restaurant as managers. Maybe they work in the hotels. They're the people who head all the housekeeping and they're the managers of that. They are definitely a tremendous sector of the service industry. But we have other characters. One is a musician. We have a reporter, a weatherman. We have a lieutenant governor. They're all over.

Is the film a wake-up call or a call action?

It's a wake-up call with a call to action as long as we work together. It's a call to let's talk to one another ... like, if we were to go to therapy as a state, you would have to tell the truth about what really bothers you, what you don't like, what you don't understand.

Couples go to therapy and then they either keep the marriage together or file for divorce and take direct legal action. Is it time for direct legal action like an amnesty for immigrants?

If you were in therapy, you would have to recognize what they contribute to your life and are you willing to give that up? I think that if we really meant it we could shut the border down so fast. If we really wanted to, and obviously we don't.

But shutting down the border would mean a huge loss of privilege. You'd have to find someone to pick up the baby from day-care, pick the oranges ...

It's all that but it's also, do you think that's right to just go find someone else to exploit? [The film] calls into question the whole system. And then just on the basis of fairness, are you willing to continue this way or are you willing to at least say thank you and please to these people? And amnesty would definitely be thank you and please.