Nathalie Álvarez Mesén's debut feature explores religious oppression and sexual desire through a Costa Rican woman's mystical awakening.
In a green, rural backwater of Costa Rica, middle-aged Clara (Wendy Chinchilla Araya) is in arrested development. She lives in a secluded forest with her hyper-religious family, yet her burgeoning sexuality is stimulated by everything from soap operas to soil. And all this is underscored by a hodgepodge of references to the Virgin Mary.
It’s a film apt for current socio-political climes, as the verdant beauty of nature is framed as a cure-all for woes, and it’s where Clara finds solace. Nathalie Álvarez Mesén’s film remains slightly distanced throughout, raking back the sand of her imagery but never really digging deep. The film treats its subjects as Clara’s family do her – at arm’s length.
And yet, the feverish and feral performance by Araya drags the film back from operating as a wispy metaphor. For Clara, every noise or voice offers an eerie reminder of her real life, and pulls her back from this waking dream. Clara is always on the precipice of eruption; her simmering exasperation is just waiting to transform into bubbling hellfire. This works as a metaphor for the film as a whole, which is always reaching towards its ideas and themes but never truly grasping them. Ironically, for a story about a woman who struggles to express herself, the film tangles itself in knots with its ill-defined ideas.
Published 16 Nov 2022
An intriguing Costa Rican character study which explores the human bounds of spiritual belief.
An amazing central performance, but too insistent in the way it delivers its themes.
In the end, the metaphor gets in the way of the emotion.
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