Fortyish Magalí works as an assistant nurse in a Buenos Aires hospital. She is just a notch above poverty and lives in a no star hotel with a dog as unique companion. Her earnings are insufficient to bring her preteen son Felix to live with her, so he has has been left with Magalí's mother in Susques, in Argentina's northernmost province of Jujuy. One day she receives a phone call with the news that Grandmother has died. Magalí takes the bus to Susques, but she is late for the funeral and the burial. Felix greets her with oblique looks: he resents having been abandoned but fears the freedom he enjoyed with Grandma will be lost in the big city.
Susques is a village in the Jujuy sierras, sitting on a high plateau at almost 13,000 feet surrounded by arid hills, cliffs, crags and denuded ravines. Vegetation is scarce and the place seems to barely tolerate human presence; a few settlers manage to eke out a living out of small herds. Magalí undergoes a subtle transformation in Susques. Supressed memories surface; folk songs, rituals, folk tales, superstitions. She did not come in search of her roots but the past, long suppressed, catches up with her and perhaps influence her plans for the future.
In this film, the stark, darkly beautiful landscapes of rural Jujuy are as much of a character as the humans walking on them, and the cinematography of Lucio Bonelli does justice to their menacing beauty. Director Juan Pablo Di Bitonto has assembled a movie where a tale is told sometimes by words, sometimes by subtle gestures. This would not work without the excellent acting, especially from Eva Bianco. A film to watch.
