Synopsis

Produced in the frame of a vanguard film festival in London, and inspired in literary works of Latin American writers, this movie is based on a short story of the same title written by Mario Levrero, who was in turn inspired by the experiments of a famous English scientist, Walter Grey, a pioneer of cybernetics and an eminent neurologist, who gave vital steps in the field of electroencephalography and created some astonishing toys or mechanical animals. These mechanical animals responded to electrical impulses as if they had some kind of primitive neurons.

Ameglio created, with admirable rigor, an atrociously artificial world in which human beings have been vacated of their humanity to become rudimentary psychosomatic organisms that react to external stimuli as if these were electro mechanic impulses. The anodyne and tragic protagonist, a prisoner of this world- there is nothing worse than a vulgar tragedy or a tragic vulgarity- seeks, at first unsuccessfully, to escape towards a natural and luminous reality where a little girl reigns. This little girl could be a kind of Alice in Wonderland, a wonderland that could, in this case, be pure and simple nature. The man who watches her run – and who shouts her name- is trapped in the world of a cold and deforming mirror.

One of the merits of the director is to achieve a very difficult thing: that the actors were completely devoid of emotions. Any traces of true human expression would have broken the impeccable and implacable coherence of this movie.

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Guión y Dirección: Cali Ameglio (basado en un cuento de Mario Levrero)
Diseño de Producción: Mario Viera
Dirección de Fotografía: Diego Arsuaga
Seg. Director de Fotografía: Daniel Rodriguez
Terc. Director de Fotografa: José María Ciganda
Producción Ejecutiva: Mario Viera y Natacha López

Actors

Elmer II: Gustavo Escanlar
Elga: Ileana Burnet
Teodoro: Ricardo Couto
Elisie: Adriana Figueroa
Doméstica: Rosario González
María: Daniela Luna
El presidente: Roberto Fntana
Huesped I: Omar Bouhid
Huesped II: Gabriela Martínez
Niñita: Ana Ines R. Larreta