Everyone has had the experience of being thwarted during a simple effort to get somewhere. In this Argentinian drama, a middle-aged nurse named Teresa (Paulina Garcia) endures such an unnerving crisis, beginning with the moment her long-distance bus ride breaks down, up through her subsequent misadventure with a traveling salesman called El Gringo (Claudio Rissi). Unceremoniously laid off from her longtime job as a maid and former nanny to a Buenos Aires family, Teresa is on her way to a new domestic position in another town. As viewers witness in often painful flashbacks, she was treated dismissively by the lady of her former house, and the child she helped raise is now a grown man whose feelings about Teresa seem stifled as she leaves. Sad and disoriented, Teresa loses her bag of meager possessions in El Gringo’s truck, and she is compelled to accompany him as he retraces his steps to remote shops where he might have left it with his deliveries. Although guarded and laconic, Teresa slowly opens up to El Gringo. Directors Cecilia Atán and Valeria Pivato beautifully collaborate with Garcia in portraying the brief blossoming of an invisible woman whose passion is under wraps. And the film is a visual thrill, as the directors counterintuitively tell this intimate story in large part through wide-open master shots placing Teresa—who could not look lonelier or more lost—at great distances from the camera. Recommended. (T. Keogh)
The Desert Bride
Strand, 78 min., in Spanish w/English subtitles, not rated, DVD: $27.99, Sept. 4 Volume 33, Issue 5
The Desert Bride
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