Taxi para tres
Chile,
2001, 90 min
Shown in 2002
CREDITS
- dir
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Orlando Lübbert
- scr
-
Orlando Lübbert
- cam
-
Patricio Riquelme
- editor
-
Alberto Ponce
- mus
-
Eduardo Zvetelman, Joe Vasconcellos
- cast
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Alejandro Trejo, Fernando Gómez-Rovira, Daniel Muñoz, Elsa Poblete, Cristian Quezada
- source
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Cormoran Producciones LTDA, Manuel de Salas 567, Nunoa, Santiago de Chile, Chile. FAX: 56-2-269-3213. EMAIL: olubbert@manquehue.net
-
COMMENTS
Orlando Lübbert in person.
OTHER
A black comic Odyssey, with a bit of the Patty Hearst kidnapping thrown in, this tale begins with a chance encounter between two opportunistic petty thieves and one ill-fated cab driver. Chavelo and Coto, two maladjusted youths, descend upon Ulises when his taxi breaks down in a ramshackle Chilean neighborhood. Offered the option of being either their victim or their accomplice, Ulises chooses the latter. This seemingly clear-cut choice, however, precipitates a series of moral quandaries that finds weak-willed Ulises embracing the promise of easy money and delicious risk. Taxi for Three takes the audience on a journey of crime and deceit in which comedy and tragedy shift as often as our protagonists’ personal fortunes. The trio’s crime spree brings both new victims and a tenacious lawman who’s hot on their trail, while the loving family of Ulises is also drawn into the increasingly precarious situation. This finely textured fable of greed and corruption, a big hit in its native Chile in spite of its ultra-low budget, is an engaging but darkly comic film (not to mention a sly metaphor for post-Pinochet Chile), where survival instincts rule and morality is elastic. Winner of the Golden Shell for Best Film at the 2001 San Sebastian Film Festival.
—Mara Pérez Godoy
FACTOID #361
John Huston, director of classics The Maltese Falcon and The Misfits, was honored with a Festival tribute in 1968. His daughter Anjelica received the Peter J. Owens Award in 1991; The Dead, one of the father-daughter duo’s collaborations, screened at her onstage interview.
