Surprises that the cinema sometimes offers: a film that takes place in a remote town in Costa Rica, an environment that is no longer rural but jungle, which seems to be placed from the beginning in thematic, character and environment situations close to
La Niña Santa,
by Lucrecia Martel, and
Nazarín,
by Luis Buñuel, and which, however, ends up converging with none other than
Carrie,
by Brian de Palma.
That this unexpected dramatic and referential turn also occurs in a first film offers enough clues about the singularity of its director, the novel Nathalie Álvarez Mesén.
Clara Sola,
the story of the sexual awakening of a woman with alleged healing powers.
More information
Sixty years after 'Viridiana', Cannes still speaks little Spanish
“I don't want to operate on her.
God sent it to me like this, and that's how I want to leave it."
The phrase, terrible and gloomy, vocalized by a mother in reference to the serious problems in her daughter's spine, belongs to
Clara Sola,
but it could well have been said by the ultra-Catholic and insane parent played by Piper Laurie in the terrifying work of Palm.
Carrie White was a teenager who hadn't even been told about her period when she came to her during gym class;
she had paranormal powers related to telekinesis, and she ended up suffering from the messes of college bullying the moment she began to be aware of what her body, her sex, and her sentimental emotions were.
Clara, whom her mother uses as a saint with healing energy, is, however, 40 years old.
However, her mind and her knowledge do not go much further than that of a small calf, perhaps due to some autism spectrum disorder in a very poor environment, or simply because of the repression to which she has been subjected by her harpy mother, thus forming extreme shyness and alarming ignorance.
Her sexual awakening, together with a strange mysticism, also provokes in her a kind of feminine liberation, happy and abrupt, in a context not suitable for autonomy.
With delicacy, Álvarez Mesén, who presented his work at the Cannes 2021 Directors' Fortnight, surrounds his big and holy girl with elements that combine the magical, the spiritual and the profoundly earthly.
A triangle that in its most everyday corner evolves into two other very different aspects: the first, based on the atavistic (water, earth and fire as defining ingredients), and the second, on the purely popular (soap operas and “ their cochinadas”, the party dresses).
And if
Carrie
culminated her climax at a high school graduation party,
Clara Sola
It does so with a Latin parallelism: a quinceañera celebration that, how could it be otherwise, culminates with a revenge that perhaps has less to do with the magical realism of the area than with the militant cinephilia of its director.
Clara Alone
Direction:
Nathalie Álvarez Mesén.
Cast:
Wendy Chinchilla, Daniel Castañeda, Ana Julia Porras, Flor Vargas.
Genre:
drama.
Costa Rica, 2021.
Duration:
106 minutes.
Premiere: May 20.
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