The principal character of the Chilean film The Cow Who Sang a Song into the Future never says a word but manages to transmit volumes of emotion via her eyes, facial expressions and periodic grunts—and it’s not the cow. The titular animal is, in fact, quite articulate with its portents of doom, embedded in choral melodies with the other cows of the field. The human protagonist, however, is less direct in her communication, although just as mysterious. If that sounds like a description of a dream, it’s because this is that kind of movie: a vivid journey into scenes that feel like real life except for one incongruous element that skews everything into a beautiful tangle of illogic and possibility. Directed by Francisca Alegria from a script she wrote with Manuela Infante and Fernanda Urrejola, The Cow Who Sang a Song into the Future resists easy interpretation even as it touches on universal themes of grief and identity. When the closing credits hit, you feel like you’re waking up having glimpsed something true but which makes little sense.
The strangeness begins with the opening scene, where a young woman emerges from a river in a jumpsuit and helmet. Magdalena (Mía Maestro), we learn, committed suicide years ago by tying herself to a motorcycle and plunging into the river, but death seems to have only been a temporary condition. Mute but alive with wonder like a visitor from another planet, she wanders out of the river and into the woods on a mysterious quest. Elsewhere, we encounter another woman, Cecilia (Leonor Varela), who is traveling with her children to visit her father’s dairy farm to care for him after a medical scare. Cecilia, it turns out, is Magdalena’s still-grieving daughter, and the family continues to suffer from Magdalena’s untimely death. In fact, it was the sight of the revivified Magdalena, walking down the street while still dripping from the river, which induced the panic attack in Cecilia’s elderly father, Enrique (Alfredo Castro). The family, brought together by this unexpected episode, still bears the wounds of Magdalena’s sudden disappearance from their lives. Her reappearance proves to be as transformative.
Filmed with documentary-like objectivity, familial scenes explore character relationships with no clear plot function. Cecilia’s son, Tomás (Enzo Ferrada), is in the midst of transitioning to a female identity, which generates some tension but no outright conflict. Cecilia’s brother, Bernardo (Marcial Tagle), has been running the family farm out of a sense of duty to their cantankerous father, but it seems he’d rather be doing something else with his life. The father of Cecilia’s children is absent and never mentioned. This is a family in an uncomfortable stasis of dissatisfaction: no one is who or where they want to be, and Cecilia centers the blame for this low-grade angst on her mother’s unspeakable act, which she may or may not have witnessed as a little girl. Some of the editing choices and camera movements mimic her sense of dislocation and ungroundedness.
Meanwhile, Magdalena visits the farm like an apparition, narrowly escaping detection except by one person at a time. She says nothing but emotes much with her face. Lights flicker and electronics malfunction as she approaches, our only clue that she’s not just a figment of her family’s imagination. She also seems to have some effect on the cattle herd, whose appearance onscreen is accompanied by choruses of voices singing of death’s approach. There are precious few clues as to what is really going on, and Magdalena never says a single word. Even when she’s picked up by a roving motorcycle gang, she remains mute and mysterious, as if only halfway present on this plane of existence. It’s tempting to believe that she isn’t there at all, and yet Maestro’s performance is vividly physical and convincing.
In turns, the members of Cecilia’s family interact with Magdalena in ways that catalyze their lives. At least, that’s one way of looking at the chaos and upheaval that accompanies her wordless visitations. This is a family that, having been shaken to its core long ago by her death, still needs some shaking up to get moving again. Whether this is a ghost story, a zombie story or something more abstract is beside the point. Answers are not given, either to the characters or to the audience. All that’s left is to ponder how both a loved one’s absence and presence can alter relationships, and how twists of fate can send people in unexpected directions even if we all share the same ultimate destination. Death is coming, the cows sing, but we all have to find our own roads to get there.
Photo courtesy of Kino Lorber
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