Chris Knipp
06-26-2024, 06:39 PM
http://www.chrisknipp.com/images/wsnt.jpg
MONICA VILLA IN CHRONICLES OF A WANDERING SAINT
TOMÁS GÓMEZ BUSTILLO: CHRONICLES OF A WANDERING SAINT (2023)
At a church somewhere in Argentina, a miracle wants to happen
J.Hurtado wrote in his Screen Anarchy review (https://screenanarchy.com/2023/03/sxsw-2023-review-chronicles-of-a-wandering-saint.html#:~:text=While%20other%20films%20at%20SX SW,you%20soak%20it%20all%20in.)that among the films at the Austin South by Southwest Festival it "wows by its simplicity." Sean Patrick of Geeks.Media (https://vocal.media/geeks/sxsw-movie-review-chronicles-of-a-wandering-saint) calls it "an elegant, lovely and moving festival debut." It's a gentle, sweet, quietly ironic little film that exudes a special Argentinian charm. It seems to be the festival favorite of many who have written about it, though there have been no major trade journal reviews, despite awards nominations and audience votes.
The film revolves around a woman past middle age, Rita (Monica Villa), whose husband Norbrerto (Horacio Marassi), a for her annoyingly inept guitar player, still works at night (what does he do?), which saves them from actually sleeping together. She largely ignores him anyway, though he still cherishes their love and thinks of returning to a waterfall they visited as newlyweds, and they are still very much a couple. At the well-worn and nearby local church Rita is a regular, an outside satellite of a little group of women, presumably devout. But while they gossip, she would rather dust, sweep, and polish, expressing her devotion in the humblest of ways. Father Eduardo (Pablo Moseinco), of course, knows her well.
The turning point comes when in a church storeroom Rita comes across a statue of a saint (presumably) that she conceives of staging as a "milagro," a miracle, and she engages Norberto to carry it back to their house. It needs some touching up. She imagines it is a statue of Saint Rita that is known to have mysteriously disappeared some thirty years ago. When Rita tells Father Eduardo about this, he says it would not just be a lucky find but, indeed, a "milagro."
The touched up statue looks very nice, but in her effort to present it in all its glory, misfortune befalls the living, real-life Rita. This is where in a use of semi-conceptual end-titles, the film "ends." Consider what follows the "after-film."
In part this is one of those studies in folksy, or updated, hagiography and a reconsideration of what ascension into Heaven might be like with modern bureaucratic procedures by angels, who in the case of Lucho (Iair Said), one of the screenplay's and casting director's finest creations, while he has a glowing neon circle floating over his head à la Dan Flavin, otherwise has something of the air of a frumpy junior traveling salesman - with alternate sainthood packages to offer.
The film has some of the regular routines of what it's like revisiting the living when you're yourself no longer one of them, and in this case talking to them just causes them to sneeze (another witty and, presumably, original device). There are even suggestions of Thornton Wilder's Our Town, but one may think more of Borges (for the conceptual inventiveness) and Becket (for the slow-motion simplicity). This is a package to ponder, and the director himself has remarked he likes films that look different and become more layered when you rewatch them. Letterboxed (https://letterboxd.com/film/chronicles-of-a-wandering-saint/) features two spot-on gems at the moment for the film: first a description: "a funny and cute film about life and death. A film that makes us wonder what makes us good"; and second, a remark: "Christian propaganda is getting a little too good." Spoken like a true lapsed Catholic.
The press kit for this film describes Rita as "a pious yet insatiably competitive woman," which is an interesting thought: perhaps true piety is or often winds up being also insatiably competitive. At any rate Rita does seem to want to become a saint. But an ardent desire of that kind doesn't disqualify one. Don't people who become saints usually try very hard? But in the scheme of things, all our worldly efforts are as nothing. And it is, conversely, a frequent assumption of stories like this that a person doesn't know how saintly she has really been.
Bustillo's film doesn't succeed, if it does, through its clever reexamination of sainthood and morality. It does so primarily through its sublimely assured and unified use of a tiny town in rural Argentina that he knows very well, a traditional world that might almost be at home, this time, in the Fifties Italy of Giovannino Guareschi, though there's no communist mayor here, and this priest hasn't a great deal to say for himself. Though Bustillo has mentioned Jacques Tati and Buster Keaton, this film awakened in me fond memories of the inimitable little films about Patagonia by Carlo Sorin like Historias Minimas (https://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?t=406) and Bombon: El Perro. Bustillo works by indirection, through pauses and minimal dialogue. He has the skill to provide a world that feels fully formed despite having only been sketched in with a few swift touches - and many silences. He has said, in an informative and candid AFI interview (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wG6LGripwn4), that he began with an Argentinian folklore of "luz mala" or evil light; that he bases Rita on himself, because he considers himself to be the only person he is allowed to make fun of; and that he is working with a restrained kind of Latin American "magic realism" that stresses the human. Indeed.
Chronicles of a Wandering Saint/Crónicas de una Santa Errante, 84 mins., from Argentina, debuted SXSW 2023, with various award nominations including three Independent Spirit; awards and nominations at Santa Fe, Leeds, New Orleans, Vancouver, etc. It opens at IFC Center June 28, 2023, and at the Lumiere Cinema in Los Angeles July 5 and at the Roxie in San Francisco July 19.
MONICA VILLA IN CHRONICLES OF A WANDERING SAINT
TOMÁS GÓMEZ BUSTILLO: CHRONICLES OF A WANDERING SAINT (2023)
At a church somewhere in Argentina, a miracle wants to happen
J.Hurtado wrote in his Screen Anarchy review (https://screenanarchy.com/2023/03/sxsw-2023-review-chronicles-of-a-wandering-saint.html#:~:text=While%20other%20films%20at%20SX SW,you%20soak%20it%20all%20in.)that among the films at the Austin South by Southwest Festival it "wows by its simplicity." Sean Patrick of Geeks.Media (https://vocal.media/geeks/sxsw-movie-review-chronicles-of-a-wandering-saint) calls it "an elegant, lovely and moving festival debut." It's a gentle, sweet, quietly ironic little film that exudes a special Argentinian charm. It seems to be the festival favorite of many who have written about it, though there have been no major trade journal reviews, despite awards nominations and audience votes.
The film revolves around a woman past middle age, Rita (Monica Villa), whose husband Norbrerto (Horacio Marassi), a for her annoyingly inept guitar player, still works at night (what does he do?), which saves them from actually sleeping together. She largely ignores him anyway, though he still cherishes their love and thinks of returning to a waterfall they visited as newlyweds, and they are still very much a couple. At the well-worn and nearby local church Rita is a regular, an outside satellite of a little group of women, presumably devout. But while they gossip, she would rather dust, sweep, and polish, expressing her devotion in the humblest of ways. Father Eduardo (Pablo Moseinco), of course, knows her well.
The turning point comes when in a church storeroom Rita comes across a statue of a saint (presumably) that she conceives of staging as a "milagro," a miracle, and she engages Norberto to carry it back to their house. It needs some touching up. She imagines it is a statue of Saint Rita that is known to have mysteriously disappeared some thirty years ago. When Rita tells Father Eduardo about this, he says it would not just be a lucky find but, indeed, a "milagro."
The touched up statue looks very nice, but in her effort to present it in all its glory, misfortune befalls the living, real-life Rita. This is where in a use of semi-conceptual end-titles, the film "ends." Consider what follows the "after-film."
In part this is one of those studies in folksy, or updated, hagiography and a reconsideration of what ascension into Heaven might be like with modern bureaucratic procedures by angels, who in the case of Lucho (Iair Said), one of the screenplay's and casting director's finest creations, while he has a glowing neon circle floating over his head à la Dan Flavin, otherwise has something of the air of a frumpy junior traveling salesman - with alternate sainthood packages to offer.
The film has some of the regular routines of what it's like revisiting the living when you're yourself no longer one of them, and in this case talking to them just causes them to sneeze (another witty and, presumably, original device). There are even suggestions of Thornton Wilder's Our Town, but one may think more of Borges (for the conceptual inventiveness) and Becket (for the slow-motion simplicity). This is a package to ponder, and the director himself has remarked he likes films that look different and become more layered when you rewatch them. Letterboxed (https://letterboxd.com/film/chronicles-of-a-wandering-saint/) features two spot-on gems at the moment for the film: first a description: "a funny and cute film about life and death. A film that makes us wonder what makes us good"; and second, a remark: "Christian propaganda is getting a little too good." Spoken like a true lapsed Catholic.
The press kit for this film describes Rita as "a pious yet insatiably competitive woman," which is an interesting thought: perhaps true piety is or often winds up being also insatiably competitive. At any rate Rita does seem to want to become a saint. But an ardent desire of that kind doesn't disqualify one. Don't people who become saints usually try very hard? But in the scheme of things, all our worldly efforts are as nothing. And it is, conversely, a frequent assumption of stories like this that a person doesn't know how saintly she has really been.
Bustillo's film doesn't succeed, if it does, through its clever reexamination of sainthood and morality. It does so primarily through its sublimely assured and unified use of a tiny town in rural Argentina that he knows very well, a traditional world that might almost be at home, this time, in the Fifties Italy of Giovannino Guareschi, though there's no communist mayor here, and this priest hasn't a great deal to say for himself. Though Bustillo has mentioned Jacques Tati and Buster Keaton, this film awakened in me fond memories of the inimitable little films about Patagonia by Carlo Sorin like Historias Minimas (https://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?t=406) and Bombon: El Perro. Bustillo works by indirection, through pauses and minimal dialogue. He has the skill to provide a world that feels fully formed despite having only been sketched in with a few swift touches - and many silences. He has said, in an informative and candid AFI interview (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wG6LGripwn4), that he began with an Argentinian folklore of "luz mala" or evil light; that he bases Rita on himself, because he considers himself to be the only person he is allowed to make fun of; and that he is working with a restrained kind of Latin American "magic realism" that stresses the human. Indeed.
Chronicles of a Wandering Saint/Crónicas de una Santa Errante, 84 mins., from Argentina, debuted SXSW 2023, with various award nominations including three Independent Spirit; awards and nominations at Santa Fe, Leeds, New Orleans, Vancouver, etc. It opens at IFC Center June 28, 2023, and at the Lumiere Cinema in Los Angeles July 5 and at the Roxie in San Francisco July 19.