47/19
Tale
A girl’s gift for narrating the events of Hollywood movies transforms her family’s fortunes in rural Chile in the 1960s. Presents Writing for Love (1953). Screened at the Toronto International Film Festival, this film is both an homage to American Westerns and an exploration of the power of cinema/storytelling to transform lives. Subtitled in Spanish, the characters are drawn from real life, and from a pretty tough one at that. Set in “the driest place on Earth,” there’s plenty of room for gentle comedy and young love. The camera turns away from the real violence, but not from the narrative, which candidly addresses what goes on behind the scenes in the town set in a saltpeter desert for 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 versimilarity.