La contadora de películas

Seen at the Toronto International Film Festival, this movie is both an homage to American Westerns and an exploration of the power of cinema / storytelling to transform a life. In Spanish with subtitles, the characters are drawn from life, and quite a difficult life at that. Set in the "driest place on earth", the community is not unhappy. There is lots of room for gentle comedy and young love. The camera turns away from actual violence, but not the story, which frankly addresses what goes on behind the scenes in the town set in a saltpetre desert for the young woman at the centre of the story. The movie was shot on location in an abandoned mining town, which only adds to the versimilitude.