06.15.06
SIFF 2006, day 20
Madeinusa
Peru
For one devout Peruvian village, God dies on Good Friday and is born again on Easter; between those days there is no sin. During these strange Holy Days young Madeinusa (Magaly Solier) falls for a gringo stranger against her father’s wishes, in this stunningly photographed take on the classic American Western.
First of all, this has nothing to do with Westerns, not one frickin’ thing. It is instead a weird kind of sexual-religious fantasy tale; it could possibly be folded in under “magical realism,” but it’s a little out there even for that. There are some great elements here, but most of them are just glanced at and never truly explored or folded effectively into the larger whole of the story; and while I’m hard to shock, there were numerous moments that hit the “was that really necessary?” marker for me. I felt like the film wasted some potentially gripping concepts in search of sensationalism and quirkiness. The Andes and the valley in which the story is set are pretty, though, and the religious imagery was fascinating in its own way.