- Nico Soto/Guazu Media
- Speranza (center) on the set of Rambleras
As I wrote last Thursday, I’m an admirer of recent Uruguayan cinema in general and Daniela Speranza’s Rambleras in particular. A wise, generous, and visually stunning comedy about overcoming life’s disappointments, Rambleras strikes me, after three viewings, as a nearly perfect film. Every detail of characterization or decor reflects careful consideration, and the graceful storytelling allows one to savor each one. As ingratiating as it is, though, the film is founded on some rather serious questions about what makes life worth living, as each of the three main characters struggles to find meaning in a life beset by loneliness and failure. Patricia is a thirtysomething, broke, and clinging to a man, Gustavo, who has no intention of leaving his long-term girlfriend. Ofelia, the elderly woman whom Patricia moves in with when she can no longer pay her rent, is so isolated that she can’t even find someone to help her cross the street so she may walk along her beloved rambla, or oceanside boardwalk. And Jacqueline, the wife of Patricia’s boss, can’t convince her husband to make her a business partner even though she does half the work in running his bakery. These characters register as fully formed individuals, yet their conflicts feel universal. Indeed Rambleras achieves a sense of timelessness with greater ease than any other recent movie I’ve seen that aspires to such a quality. I hope someone brings it back to Chicago before long.
In Rambleras, there are little conflicts but big decisions that people have to make. I think people relate to that because these things happen to all of us. This kind of film is the opposite of movies where something big happens to the characters and they have to solve something. I can’t say if that’s what other Uruguayan filmmakers have in mind.
But in these movies, there’s a sense that people aren’t just what they do, but how they do it.
Yes. That movie is really four shorts that are linked by a narrator, and they all have to do with bad luck. It’s called Mala Racha—”a stroke of bad luck” in English. But that was made on video. So, in a sense, Rambleras is my first film because it’s on film, there were more days of shooting, a bigger crew . . .
- Ofelia (Adriana Aizenberg), preparing to cross the street
I feel like I was locked into this idea. I couldn’t do other [films]. Sometimes I just had to wait a while for the next step on this.
When did you start teaching?
Ofelia’s room
Maria Elena Perez as Jacqueline
