In Extremadura, a province in the southwest of Spain, a village awaits a great flash of light. Anything to shake up the fossilized monotony of this community caught somewhere between archaic \u00bbmachoexplicac\u00edon\u00ab and the faded brocade folds draped around the Virgin Mary effigy during an Easter procession. Like all of her prophecies, Isa tape records this vision in case all disappears, memories vanish. Cita wants to disappear herself \u2013 leave her whining, ceiling-licking husband behind. She even gets gussied up to do so, but only makes it as far as the TV to cackle, or to the church pew for penitence. Maria, a widow, wanders the sun-bleached alleyways alone. Is she really mourning her husband, or do we furtively catch her doing a little jig of joy?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the women here who radiate an imaginative resilience despite the crosses they bear. Their deliverance: the juicy secrets they keep, sad stories shared and delicious dreams of things like tiny dragons in one\u2019s mouth or chocolate caramel peeing from the clouds. Casting non-actors from the region from where she hails, Rodriguez\u2019s narrative explores faces and places. Rather than stick with one character, it unfolds like tatters from a cosmic, pulsating tapestry of collective interiority. The chimerical images and sound design \u2013 with scenes so curious and painterly in composition and hue; sounds so edgy, synthetic and close \u2013 feel like a nod to Surrealist painting and field research gone wild, all at once.<\/p>\n