Clara Sola

Nathalie Álvarez Mesén's 2021 film is set in a remote village in Costa Rica. Clara, forty, lives with her mother and is regarded by the villagers as a healer; her mother manages that belief, takes money from visitors and keeps her daughter's body under her own control. Surgery for the condition in Clara's spine has been refused too, because the mother counts it as God's will. The film moves as Clara discovers her own desire, and that discovery sets itself directly against religious and family pressure. The telling slides into a magical realist register, with the relationship between Clara, the animals and the natural world built without words. Wendy Chinchilla Araya, in the lead, is a dancer and constructs the character almost entirely through her body. It screened in the Directors' Fortnight at Cannes. Who it's for: viewers who like slow, formal films. Who it's not for: anyone expecting explanation and dialogue; the film rests on silence.