A family from Lugo, Spain, owns the confiterÃa Ritz, an institution in the Argentine city of La Plata. It is here that everything unfolds, through a series of strange, funny and melancholic events that suggest a succession of tableaux rather than a conventional narrative sequence—very much in keeping with LucÃa Seles’ cinematic language. Lost characters drift through the story, caught in a quiet despair shaped by their inability to communicate.
Lucia Seles is a self-proclaimed graphomaniac, and in The Bewilderment of Chile, we are taken on a tour through her observations on many subjects, but maybe most of all, our insatiable need for someone to understand what we really mean through our clumsy words. Between the feverish editing style, the cast of characters who gravitate around a pastry shop in El Plata and amp up the feeling of the film to telenovela heights, and the written notes which appear on the screen right next to the subtitles, one could very well go crazy, if not for the subtle control the director has over everything. And it is in this gesture that Seles’ impulse of recording all that surrounds her shapes itself into a touching way of trying to make sense of all of this electricity and confusion. The Bewilderment of Chile is a demanding sensorial experience, but one that perfectly mirrors and honors this contemporary fragmentation of the self and reassures us that we are worthy of being looked at.
Leonor Castro Nunes
