15/42
A girl’s talent for narrating events from Hollywood movies transforms her family’s fortunes in rural Chile in the 1960s. Screened at the Toronto International Film Festival, this film is an homage to American Westerns and an exploration of the power of cinema/storytelling to transform life. Subtitled in Spanish, the characters are drawn from life, and from a very difficult life at that. 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 moves away from the actual violence, but not from the story, which frankly turns to what goes on behind the scenes in the town, located in a saltpeter desert, to the young woman at the center of the story. The film was shot on location in an abandoned mining town, which only adds to the believability.