The late Chilean director Raul Ruiz (which made more than a hundred films, most of them of an avant-garde sort, respected by film critics but with a very limited audience) shoot this film in 1973, on the eve of the Pinochet coup. After the coup, Ruiz, a supporter of Salvador Allende, went into exile (eventually into France) leaving the film negatives in Chile. Only in 1990 he could return to edit the film. It was released in 1992, to great success in Chile (this was probably Ruiz's commercially most successful film, at least in his native country).
Amid the 1970 election between Allende and his conservative opponent Alessandri, a poor girl (Beatriz Lapido) begins a relation with a rich boy (Rodrigo Ureta). This allows Ruiz to show the huge divide (not just economic, but cultural) between the rich and the poor in Chile. The movie works with humorous vignettes more than with a straightforward story, which shows Godard's influence on Ruiz at this part of his career. The film also compares their romance with those in the idealized telenovelas or soap operas, so popular at the time in Chile and the rest of Latin America.
This was based on a famous book by Enrique Lafourcade. Reportedly (since I haven't read the novel) Ruiz took many liberties with the book, and this has some people upset. But the film is very good in its own terms. Lapido is pretty and compelling (this was her first and only movie). Ureta is quite inarticulate, but this is probably in line with his character as a spoiled rich brat.
In other films of him, Ruiz's cleverness can be tiresome and irritating, but in this film it is tempered by the genuine warmth he feels toward the characters. And the movie has some genuinely funny pieces (for example, in the scene with the high school professor's rambling speech to his students, or the socialist activist creatively insulting the Alessandri supporters in the street). A great soundtrack by the music group Los Jaivas helps the movie a lot.
Amid the 1970 election between Allende and his conservative opponent Alessandri, a poor girl (Beatriz Lapido) begins a relation with a rich boy (Rodrigo Ureta). This allows Ruiz to show the huge divide (not just economic, but cultural) between the rich and the poor in Chile. The movie works with humorous vignettes more than with a straightforward story, which shows Godard's influence on Ruiz at this part of his career. The film also compares their romance with those in the idealized telenovelas or soap operas, so popular at the time in Chile and the rest of Latin America.
This was based on a famous book by Enrique Lafourcade. Reportedly (since I haven't read the novel) Ruiz took many liberties with the book, and this has some people upset. But the film is very good in its own terms. Lapido is pretty and compelling (this was her first and only movie). Ureta is quite inarticulate, but this is probably in line with his character as a spoiled rich brat.
In other films of him, Ruiz's cleverness can be tiresome and irritating, but in this film it is tempered by the genuine warmth he feels toward the characters. And the movie has some genuinely funny pieces (for example, in the scene with the high school professor's rambling speech to his students, or the socialist activist creatively insulting the Alessandri supporters in the street). A great soundtrack by the music group Los Jaivas helps the movie a lot.