Chile / Spain / Venezuela,
2003, 90 min
Shown in 2004
CREDITS
- dir
-
Gonzalo Justiniano
- prod
-
Gonzalo Justiniano, Carlo Bettín
- scr
-
Gonzalo Justiniano, Fernando Aragón, Sergio Gómez
- cam
-
Andrés Garretón
- editor
-
Danielle Fillios
- mus
-
Cuti Aste
- cast
-
Manuela Martelli, Ricardo Fernández, Lorene Prieto, Eduardo Barril, Felipe Ríos
- source
-
PWI Media, Cruz del Sur 133 Of. 403 & 404, Las Condes, Santiago, Chile. FAX: 562-207-2963. EMAIL: rnaranjo@pwimedia.com.
- premiere
-
U.S. Premiere
-
COMMENTS
Gonzalo Justiniano in person.
OTHER
Kathy is a sensitive 14-year-old girl at an awkward age: She isn’t sure whether to follow the lead of adults or rebel against everything they stand for. Her deluded airy-fairy schoolteacher tells the class, “It’s very important in life to be happy.” In director Gonzalo Justiniano’s rural Chile that is easier said than done, for this is a world where decent people are constantly frustrated and ruined by the ne’er-do-wells around them. Kathy’s jailbird father is a handsome old devil for whom being happy means pulling off a great robbery. Her hard-working mother, on the other hand, has to submit to her boss’s indignities to keep her miserable little job. Kathy feels the stirrings of love for the first time when she meets the poetic new boy in class. It’s love at first sight for these two fledgling soulmates. But Kathy becomes the victim of a series of circumstances that leave her abandoned and alone. She tells herself over and over, “I’m not afraid of anything,” and it’s just as well, because anything and everything is what’s waiting for her. Justiniano (Amnesia, SFIFF 1995; El Leyton, SFIFF 2003) has developed a confident style that makes no concessions to sensationalism in telling the touching story of a young innocent challenged by life to make herself an adult.
—Miguel Pendás
FACTOID #25
The San Francisco International showed Lina Wertm’ller’s first film, The Lizards, in 1963. A favorite of Bay Area audiences, her features All Screwed Up and The Seduction of Mimi had their U.S. premieres at the SFIFF in 1972 and 1974.
