This visually impactful and auditorily extraordinary film presents the experiences of Cristina (Viviana Herrera), a young Mapuche woman who works as caregiver for an elderly Hungarian man in Santiago de Chile. Solitary but contented, Cristina loves spending her free time exploring the streets and parks of the city of her dreams. One day while taking out the trash, she discovers an abandoned briefcase whose contents allow her to reconstruct the fragmented story of their equally lost owner, Tristán (Andrés Ulloa), a profoundly melancholic architect with a broken heart. Cristina decides to follow him secretively in his disoriented wanderings through Santiago’s streets, smoking his cigarettes, listening to his MP3s and silently entering into his world. Finally the parallel lives of the two protagonists cross after an accident, but their tender encounter lasts only a few moments before the two of them become once again dispersed in the big city.

Vera R. Coleman

Arizona State University