Film Overview: Jorge Perez Solano's 'La Tirisia' Ronnie Scheib - Variety
go to original September 16, 2014

La Tirisia - Trailer (MediaLunaNewFilms)

A major theme of recent Latin American cinema - the erosion of the family caused by a parent leaving to work elsewhere in an endless chain of abandonment - assumes archetypal, quasi-mythical dimensions in Jorge Perez Solano's "La tirisia." Set in an arid landscape of towering cacti and cultivated salt flats, inhabited by women rooted to the earth while their men wander restlessly, the film is haunted by tirisia, a perpetual sadness defined as "the death of the spirit."

The film centers around two pregnant women. First, there's Angeles (Gabriela Cartol), a sullen teen who seldom speaks, endlessly toys with her braid and sprawls on piles of salt, sifting it through her fingers. She lives with her equally mute mother, Serafina (Mercedes Hernandez), and her stepfather, Sylvestre (Gustavo Sanchez Parra), who has impregnated Angeles. The three seldom display any affection or emotion, Serafina appearing merely stoically upset when her husband peremptorily hauls her daughter off for rather one-sided sex. She resolves to send her daughter away once the baby is born and raise it herself. Sylvestre, meanwhile, roves around in a dilapidated pickup or stares longingly at planes passing overhead, secretly hoarding money for an airline ticket out.

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