This paper analyzes Arturo Ripstein's El castillo de la pureza and the ways that it represents the decline of the Mexican Miracle. Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI) was an inward economic policy implemented in Mexico during the early twentieth century. In this paper, I trace the history of ISI in Mexico as well as how it affected the film industry. The main argument is that the film allegorically represents the perverse effects of the inward economic policy through the control of the space of the family and the home.