Intimate Stories

Three people set out separately onto the empty roads of Patagonia. Don Justo, eighty, is looking for his lost dog. Roberto, a travelling salesman, is carrying a birthday cake to the son of a woman he likes and cannot decide what to have written on it. María, a young mother, boards a bus to appear on a television game show. The three journeys intersect along the same route. Carlos Sorín's film has no need of large events. Most of the cast are not professionals but people chosen from the region. That choice gives the film a documentary grain and makes the rhythm of the speech real. The landscape is empty, the distances long, the stories small, which is what the title says. It screened at the San Sebastián Film Festival on 26 September 2002, where it took the Special Jury Prize and the FIPRESCI award, and won the Goya for Best Spanish-Language Foreign Film in 2003. It was shot in Argentina's Santa Cruz province. Who it's for: Viewers who like road movies, small-scale storytelling, and the plainer vein of Latin American cinema. Who it's not for: Almost nothing happens and there is no tension. It is too still for anyone who needs a plot.