The old maxim goes that youth is wasted on the young, but part of this naiveté is to seek truth and self discovery. María is ending her high school years and lives as a lone wolf who does not quite fit in. She decides to do something about it and leaves the safety of her home to move toward the open sea and seek adventure in the world around you. This song use of the quiet and pensive character María makes you think about the isolation we all deal with. There is something comforting to the silence and even though we may seem to not fit in where we live, we do have a place within the universe around us. This movie is a moving tale about a young woman seeking self discovery. I saw this film as part of the Atlanta Film Festival
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abcvision19 March 2013
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chemingineer21 October 2012Maria is 18 years old, an introvert and also very secretive. She does not talk much and has no friends at the school. But she doesn't say no to men when they try to take advantage of her body. She writes a journal which is mostly notes to herself, and in which she loathes herself for being a whore. On graduation day she runs away from home and goes on a long bus journey that finally takes her to La Paz Lake in northern Mexico. What she finds and does there cannot be revealed in this review. Her smile in the closing frame of the film on the shore of the lake is as beguiling as that of Mona Lisa.
Maria dominates the film in large close-ups; her expressions however give away nothing. When she is having a dialogue with her mother, the latter is out of focus. We don't get to see the face of the man who befriends and exploits her in the restaurant. The film has a slow lyrical tempo with arresting views of the Mexican landscape.
Maria's long journey has to be considered as a metaphor, a metaphor for self-discovery and emotional evolution. Is her destination planned or is it a happy accident? It is a secret that we will never know. -
evony-jwm23 December 2020To repeat myself; ugly girl knowingly sleeps around with no connection to random unattractive also unworthy partners. No sex in movie just heavy breathing headshots again boring. The meaning of life has passed this movie..
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barrydayton6 January 2023While the beginning of this film may seem like the story of an unhappy girl who after finishing school simply wants to get away from her pointless life in Mexico City. She leaves on a seemingly random trip in the middle of the night without telling her mother. She writes letters to herself in her diary telling herself she is an amazing girl, which is hard to see at this point, but also criticizing herself for selling sex on the way to finance her trip, but the film is not about this. If we are patient enough to get to the end of this short film we find out that she has specific desire she must fulfill, watching the whales. In the end this a slow, sweet story of an amazing girl who fulfills her fondest dream.