41/39
A girl’s talent for retelling Hollywood movie events changes the fate of her family in rural 1960s Chile. The film, seen at the Toronto International Film Festival, is both a tribute to American Westerns and an exploration of the power of cinema/storytelling to change lives. In Spanish with subtitles, the characters are drawn from real life, and hard life at that. Set in “the driest place on earth,” the community is not unhappy. There is plenty of room for gentle comedy and young love. The camera turns away from the real violence, but not from the story, which honestly addresses what goes on behind the scenes in a town in the saltpeter desert for the young woman at the center of the story. The film was shot in an abandoned mining town, which only adds to the verisimilitude.