Historias mínimas

Three people set off on different journeys through Patagonia to the distant town of San Julian. There's an old man with failing eyesight hitchhiking to find his lost dog Badface, an obsessive traveling salesman trying to win a young widow with a birthday cake for his son which he keeps changing to make more perfect, and a simple impoverished woman traveling to find out if she can bring home a prize from a television game show. The minutely observed characters, mostly non-professional actors, are endearing, honest and fascinating with their Argentinean reserve and kindness that bridge the vast Patagonian landscape. Probably the weirdest road movie since the Straight Story and with a feelgood factor that is genuine and unpretentious. It tells of the importance of small events in lives very removed from our own.

An excellent movie from the most spectacular end of the world, Patagonia, which tells in a slow pace short, unspectacular but very humane stories of every day life: the ways of four protagonists - Don Justo is the most touching old man seen on the screen in a long time - cross in Puerto San Julian, the province capital, which is still just a handful of wind-shaken houses on the scenic coast. Poetic landscape, impressing actors, human touch - a must-see, not only for Patagonia fans.

The movie can be seen as a road-movie in the loneliness of the province of Santa Cruz, in South Patagonia.

Each one of the three chief characters, with different kinds of loneliness, look for a light in their future: María, a very poor woman living in an abandoned railway station, is selected for take part in a TV prize program; Don Justo, an old man, looks for his dog lost years ago; Roberto, a road seller of goods, tries to gain the love of a young widow customer. Three simple stories that touch the heart of people because their emotiveness and humor.

This is the second movie of Carlos Sorin in the windy and desert Patagonia ("La Pelicula del Rey" was the former one).

In few films the title fits the content so well: Minimal Stories is exactly about that, small stories in which practically nothing that happens takes place outside the people who live them, tiny pieces of their lives where everything that occurs could be told in two or three lines. This movie is not about important events, nothing that could be called big. It is precisely that: a story of the small. The people that appear in it live in a village in South Patagonia surrounded by impressive extensions of flat land, of dust and nothing, as if to sharpen the feeling that nothing being told can be shot by the camera. To me, this is a merit of the film: to make me feel the camera is placed inside the people I see instead of outside. What it comes to show is the wonderful picture of the loneliness of the landscape impressed on them.

This is a delightful film. If you wish to get away from Hollywood movies,you should give this movie a try. Each actor brings a wonderful performance. Don Justo gives a warm and "simpatico" delivery. It seems to me that they were not acting. It felt it was really happening at that moment...live. Grab your tea or your "Mate" and get ready to enjoy a "Patagonic" experience that you will treasure for a lifetime.