The Desert Bride

Teresa is fifty-four and has spent most of her life as a domestic servant in a house in Buenos Aires. When the family decide to sell the house, her job ends. She sets out for new work far away in San Juan. On the road she loses her bag and comes across El Gringo, a travelling salesman. The journey takes longer than she expected. Cecilia Atán and Valeria Pivato directed the film together; the Argentine and Chilean co-production screened in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes. Paulina García plays Teresa. The telling promises no great transformation; its subject is a woman who has lived her whole life in someone else's house finding herself on her own for the first time. The desert landscape carries that emptiness.