A tender 'queer' melodrama

The first feature film by young Chilean filmmaker Diego Céspedes, awarded at Cannes, addresses his country's memory (it is set in the 1980s, at the beginning of the HIV epidemic) from a political perspective that takes up the question of identity and familial and affective dissidence as its banner. In a remote part of the Chilean desert, in a mining community, Lidia, a pre-teen, lives with her mother, a magnetic trans woman named Flamenco, and her companions in a nightclub run by the powerful matriarch Mamá Boa. This unorthodox family unit is threatened when a mysterious illness begins to spread, affecting both the miners and the residents of the nightclub.

There is a clear dialogue in Céspedes' film with historical references in cinema. queer (the fabulous scene with Rocío Jurado's song could have been filmed by Almodóvar and would have thrilled Fassbinder), as well as many of its characteristics: the choice of protagonists marginalized from hegemonic narratives, a rereading of the past in political terms, a formal audacity that seeks to break with canonical language, and an eggplant animal. western of revenge, fantasy, and magical realism. Although many of the elements are recognizable, The mysterious gaze of the flamingo It reveals itself as a unique, exciting and poetic work, due to the infinite tenderness with which the director treats his characters, as well as the powerful and unbreakable emotional bonds he weaves between them.