32/15
The girl’s gift for retelling events from Hollywood films transforms the fate of her family in rural Chile in the 1960s. The film shows the film Härifrån till evigheten (1953). Screened at the Toronto International Film Festival, this film is both a tribute to the American Western and an exploration of the power of film/storytelling to transform life. Subtitled in Spanish, the characters are taken from life, and it’s a pretty complicated life. Set in “the driest place on earth,” the community is not unhappy. There’s plenty of room for gentle comedy and young love. The camera strays from the real violence, but not from the story, which frankly tells what goes on behind the scenes in a town set in a desert wasteland about a young woman who is at the center of the story. The film was shot on location in an abandoned mining town, which only adds to its versatility.