This is a difficult film to review as most of the narration is done through inference, symbol, by what is not said and by the thoughts the viewer brings when watching. The plot is embedded rather than explicit: A woman, Maria, has a young daughter who is doing well at school and the woman wants better things for her daughter than she herself achieved. She sends her daughter to live with friends whilst she journeys across the Argentine border into Chile to join itinerant workers picking grapes. She has taken this employment in the past a long time ago. She is startled to encounter a man she worked with before; each recognises the other but the recognition is not amicable. She explains she has not returned sooner because she has a daughter. We watch the female workers as they cut the grapes from the vines and package them for onward sale. They work in hot, dry conditions where water is scant. Important communications are done by a man carrying a particular flag and, as we see, are missed at critical times.
Maria forms a bond with one of the women, Violeta, who is somewhat rowdy but well intentioned. They make plans together for employment and a holiday after they finish fruit picking. The plans are disrupted by Violeta being injured during the course of work. Maria has been injured too in a sharp and brutal scene. The brutality is visceral rather than visual. Maria covers herself with mud, which was discussed earlier with Violeta as a beauty treatment. She walks as a "mud woman" around the lake where she had been injured and then plunges into the water. She does not resurface and there the film ends.
Most subtly the film looks at class issues and the plight of single women who are exploited. In this way it is deeply political. The image of a mud woman remembers also the Incas and the film feels like a psychological regression. The photography of the film is beautiful because the arid landscape is beautiful. The dialogue is scant and this is a bare film about a bare existence.
