The Movie Teller * * * *

Maria narrates "The Good The Bad and The Ugly"

The only thing I knew about this Chilean film is that it's about a girl who has an uncanny ability to narrate the film she recently saw.  As I'm really bad at it, I thought I'd go see how she does it. 

Set in the Attica Desert in Chile, Maria Margarita lives in a mining town.  It's dry and dusty.  The town is made up of tiny terraced cottages.  It looks thoroughly unattractive but there is the compensation that living in such quarters creates community.  They share their lives and hardship. 

Maria's mother is known to be the most beautiful woman in town. Her father is much older but they seem to be a loving couple.  

Sunday is the big day when they all go to the cinema.  They spend the evening talking about the film they saw.   One day misfortune strikes and the family income is stifled.  Soon they can no longer afford to go to the cinema as a family. So they agree that one of the children should go each Sunday and then come home and tell the others about the film.

Maria's three  older brothers are all given the opportunity, but when they come home their narration is off-centre, undramatic, uninformed dull and biased.  Finally it's Marias turn.  When she comes back from the cinema and reenacts Spartacus the family are entranced.  And so are we to be honest. She remembers dialogue, she uses props, she becomes lost in the moment like a great actress.

Then Mum leaves - and this really is what the story becomes - the missing Mother.  There is no great mystery though.  It's hardly a police matter as everyone knows she chose to leave her family.  She married young and has always felt that she has been robbed of life, especially now that she has an infirmed elderly husband. She wants to live her own life before it is all too late.

With Dad incapacitated and Mum gone Maria brings in some money for the family by charging a small fee and narrating films for everyone else in town who cannot afford to go to the movies. 

The second half of the film is several years later.  Now Maria is a young woman.  Like her mother she has been blessed with good looks. And like her mother she seems destined to not take wing.  She still narrates films for coins, and works as a school cleaner. Will she too live an unfulfilled life in a dusty mining town?

Above is a brief synopsis that Maria would probably  find appalling.  For there is so much more to this big beautiful drama. The fate of her brothers, the manager of the mine who is kind but somewhat opportunistic, the vile money lender of the town, and the boy who is her first love. And then there are the biblical and visual references and symbolism. Do you remember the fate of Lot's wife?  (This is a town that mines saltpeter).

Then there are the references to the movies and stars of that ea. 

It is set in the sixties and early seventies, concluding with that awful military coup, when Pinochet betrayed his own people, sold his soul to the CIA, and put his evil stamp upon the country.

Although it's a Chilean production and spoken in Spanish, it's directed by Danish Director Lone Scherfig, who I remember from An Education and Their Finest.