Wendy Chinchilla Araya makes a tremendous debut as a neglected woman with learning difficulties who is believed to have spiritual powers – and who falls for a handsome local boy
A luminous lead performance – captured almost entirely in closeup – is at the heart of this mysterious drama of sexuality and divine grace. It’s an outstanding first feature from 34-year-old Costa Rican film-maker Nathalie Álvarez Mesén, and her lead performer Wendy Chinchilla Araya is making her own deeply impressive movie debut, having worked before this in dance and mime.
Araya plays Clara, a woman of early middle age who lives in a Costa Rican village with her elderly mother Fresia (Flor María Vargas Chavez) and teen niece Maria (Ana Julia Porras Espinoza). Clara has learning difficulties and a spine malformation, but Fresia will not hear of Clara having this corrected surgically despite the hospital assuring her there is no cost involved.
A luminous lead performance – captured almost entirely in closeup – is at the heart of this mysterious drama of sexuality and divine grace. It’s an outstanding first feature from 34-year-old Costa Rican film-maker Nathalie Álvarez Mesén, and her lead performer Wendy Chinchilla Araya is making her own deeply impressive movie debut, having worked before this in dance and mime.
Araya plays Clara, a woman of early middle age who lives in a Costa Rican village with her elderly mother Fresia (Flor María Vargas Chavez) and teen niece Maria (Ana Julia Porras Espinoza). Clara has learning difficulties and a spine malformation, but Fresia will not hear of Clara having this corrected surgically despite the hospital assuring her there is no cost involved.
- 11/15/2022
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Earlier this year, in Goran Stolevski’s You Won’t Be Alone, a young witch becomes enamored with the life of humans. She starts to interact in a world where she is forbidden, giving up her relation to the witch mother keeping her under her control. Throughout that movie there are inklings of discovery, almost like a child first learning to walk and speak, to eventually realizing what love is. If there is a similar dynamic in Nathalie Álvarez Mesén’s Clara Sola, this is also a movie that finds its central character escaping religious suppression and contending with her burgeoning sexuality. It recalls Stolevski’s film in the treatment of “breaking out of the shell” as a sort of “growing up” but grounds itself in cultural tradition rather than historical fantasy.
A 40-year-old woman named Clara (Wendy Chinchilla Araya) has a spinal disability to which her religiously devout mother proudly...
A 40-year-old woman named Clara (Wendy Chinchilla Araya) has a spinal disability to which her religiously devout mother proudly...
- 7/5/2022
- by Soham Gadre
- The Film Stage
"Abracadabra, alakazoo... Clara transform!" Oscope Labs has revealed the full US trailer for a Costa Rican indie film titled Clara Sola, arriving in very limited US theaters this July. This iniitally premiered at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival in the Directors' Fortnight sidebar, playing to great reviews before it went on to play at tons of other film festivals. In a remote village in Costa Rica, Clara, a withdrawn 40-year-old woman, experiences a sexual and mystical awakening as she begins a journey to free herself from the repressive religious and social conventions which have dominated her life. Wendy Chinchilla Araya stars as Clara, with Flor María Vargas Chavez, Ana Julia Porras Espinoza, and Daniel Castañeda Rincón. The critics describe it as a film mixing "religion, mysticism and sexuality in a way that feels simultaneously odd, disquieting and richly rewarding." This looks seriously mesmerizing, with some gorgeous cinematography. Here's the official US...
- 6/9/2022
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
Costa Rica on Friday selected Nathalie Álvarez Mesén’s debut feature Clara Sola to as the country’s submission to the 2022 International Feature Oscar race. The pic, which made its world premiere in the Directors’ Fortnight sidebar at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, was later scooped up by Oscilloscope Laboratories which will release it in theaters early next year.
Álvarez Mesén and Maria Camila Arias co-penned the script for the pic, which is set in a remote Costa Rican village and centers on 40-year-old Clara, who endures a repressively religious and withdrawn life under the command of her mother. Tension builds within the family as Clara’s younger niece approaches her quinceañera, igniting a sexual and mystical awakening in Clara, and a journey to free herself from the conventions that have dominated her life.
Ana Julia Porras Espinoza, Daniel Castañeda Rincón, Flor María Vargas Chavez and Wendy Chinchilla Araya star.
Álvarez Mesén and Maria Camila Arias co-penned the script for the pic, which is set in a remote Costa Rican village and centers on 40-year-old Clara, who endures a repressively religious and withdrawn life under the command of her mother. Tension builds within the family as Clara’s younger niece approaches her quinceañera, igniting a sexual and mystical awakening in Clara, and a journey to free herself from the conventions that have dominated her life.
Ana Julia Porras Espinoza, Daniel Castañeda Rincón, Flor María Vargas Chavez and Wendy Chinchilla Araya star.
- 10/22/2021
- by Patrick Hipes
- Deadline Film + TV
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