Sweet and ever-so-slight, “Confessions of a Wandering Saint” is a dark, deadpan Argentine comedy about a “miracle” and the faithful Catholic who’s willing to risk her fast pass to heaven to “prove it.”
The debut feature of Argentine filmmaker Tomás Gómez Bustillo, “Crónicas de una Santa Errante” is set in a rural village where a quartet of little old ladies tidy the ancient church whose saint gives the crossroads its name — Santa Rita.
The others also serve as a vocal group for Father Eduardo (Pablo Moseinco). But pious Rita (Mónica Villa) stumbles across something that might prove her faith is the strongest of all. An old statue, covered and stored, bears a resemblence to a long missing icon of the saint she and the town are named for.
She starts digging around on the Internet and finds both confirmation and refutation for her theory. Typical.
She gets so wrapped up in this moral dilemma that she neglects her doting husband Norberto (Horacio Marassi), who is on her side.
“If you want it to be a miracle, it is,” he says (in Spanish with English subtitles).
The priest is an even easier sale, especially after the statue is “modified” to fit the old descriptions of it.
How far will Rita go to make her, her saint’s, her church’s and her town’s name? Pretty far.
That’s how she has the accident. The credits roll — full credits — and yet, we’re only 33 or so minutes into this story. The movie’s not over until the saintly statue and the faith that props it up says so.
Rita emerges from the wreck a ghost, trying to find one being who can see her. Norberto and her friends and priest don’t. At least Norberto sneezes in her presence, as if he’s got a clue.
A guy on a scooter seems to know, but he’s got horns and “you’re not my case.” It’s up to an “angel” (English pronunciation), complete with halo (Nahiel Correa Dornell) explains the drill — “express” service to heaven, or “”premium” path, complete with canonization, the works.
Will Rita’s dream come true? Or will she get “stuck,” manifested as a lightbulb or moth or what have you as a form of purgatory?
“Confessions” isn’t exactly Latin American “magical realism.” It’s a lot closer to “Heaven Can Wait/A Matter of Life and Death/Here Comes Mr. Jordan” than anything of great meaning and weight. There are “rules” to this afterlife, because there always are.
It’s a lovely looking film, of rustic rural vistas, pools of light in the evening gloom and whimsical angelic halos for the heavenly, with the dead-on-their-journey glowing in the dark.
But it’s lightweight, vague and a tad obscure, never quite delivering the parable it promises, limiting the young, quarelsome and randy new couple next door as mere decorative titilation, the priest is unrealized comic potential.
Screen veteran Villa, who dates back to “Waiting for the Hearse” in the ’80s, makes Rita a simple woman of faith, cunning enough to figure out what will seal the faked deal, clumsy enough to wreck on the way to her triumph. We kind of like her, but that’s more intuitive than anything this thin script delivers.
Rating: profanity, some nudity
Cast: Mónica Villa, Horacio Marassi, Pablo Moseinco and Nahiel Correa Dornell
Credits: Scripted and directed by Tomás Gómez Bustillo. A Hope Runs High release.
Running time: 1:25
