Orlando Vargas

This fine little picture takes the viewer up into northern Uruguay to the Brazilian border and a flat bleak stormy coast.

As to what happens, it is fair to say that it depends on what you might think happens.

This is one of those cases in which it seems that lots of very major events are going on but the viewer remains rather clueless. And clearly on purpose.

Still it is a good ride, opening in the suave capital city then moving darkly north.

The acting is excellent and the filming is rather majestic on the minuscule of detail. The director has a firm hand.

The sound is a mixture of French and Spanish, the Latin American kind of Spanish. And lots of wind and beach surf sounds.

This is all certainly worth the trip, if only for the haunting sound track music and some views of the parts of the world so banal that they seem extraordinary.

The main song is perhaps the one Almovodar immortalized a few years ago about three movies back, the one about the hospital, then it may not be. It is that kind of a movie.