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This debut feature from Chilean writer director Alicia Scherson is marked by an adherence to the tenet that the protagonist should see the world as we would if we had just arrived in Santiago, Scherson’s home city. Cristina (Viviana Herrera), a young Mapuche girl who has recently arrived from the country and divides her days between caring for a terminally ill Hungarian man, in whose house she lives, and wandering the streets of the city, puncturing her journeys with visits to video game arcades, which provide a release of action and excitement that she senses in the city, but which she does not yet know how to tap into. We follow her around as the film’s narrative develops, and through this technique Scherson manages to create an atmosphere of discovery without an alarming rate of incident; we take as much interest in Cristina’s small decisions and minor voyeuristic pursuits as she does herself.

When Cristina serendipitously finds a stolen briefcase in a rubbish bin, the material within it leads her to Tristán (Andrés Ulloa), someone born in the city, but as much, if not more so, adrift in its conventions and social struggle as Cristina is. Cristina follows Tristán as he departs from his broken marriage to take refuge at his blind mother’s house, his music running through her mind as she ploughs through his iPod selections and smoke from his cigarettes completing her absorption of his character. The desire to experience the life of the characters that Cristina encounters as a result of her discovery is given visual emphasis by her desire to get so close to the subjects of her discovered narrative as to smell them; she wants to live in their world completely.

Little hints throughout the film remind us that, while we are occasionally given access to Tristán’s world as a counterpoint to Cristina’s story, it is Cristina’s perspective that drives the narrative. The visual surrealism of imaginary fights Cristina undertakes in the style of her favourite arcade game character remind us that here is a young woman with curiosity, but also with dreams and aspirations that, while seeming mundane to those around her in the comparatively bustling city, involve nothing less than a break away from tradition, from her upbringing and from her ancestry. Her mother is only present in the film through a phone call, during which Cristina frustratedly reiterates the fact that she likes the city, this is her home now.

A masterstroke in the file is the development of the love interest. Initially and conventionally, it takes the form of Manuel (J. Pablo Quezada), the young, good-looking man who works as a gardener around the block of flats where Cristina lives. Manuel is also of native Chilean stock and wishes to return to the country to live in a familial farming idyll. Cristina is affectionate towards him, but knows that she cannot return to the lifestyle that she has abandoned. Secondly, there is Tristán, still pining for the loss of his beautiful wife and reeling from the prospect of losing his job, whom Cristina finds lying in a heap after apparently throwing himself from scaffolding on the building site where he works as an executive representative. Cristina follows him to hospital and sits at his bed, and for a moment or two the audience suspects that there is a triste on the cards. However, only in the final scene is the true object of Cristina’s affections revealed, and we realize it is one we have known all along.

Scherson has created an insight into her city that sparkles with sunlight and, despite a slight inability to discard the favoured trait of Latino cinema of searching for coincidence at every corner, she presents a picture of Santiago that is compelling and authentic.

by Tom Scruton