A young girl (Claudia Ohana, who has a beneficial resemblance to Barbara Steele) is forced into prostitution to repay a million-peso debt to her grandmother (Irene Papas, not so much matriarchal as monarchical, wearing imperial robes, sitting in thronelike postures, brandishing a scepter). The script is by Gabriel García Márquez, and he would appear to be calling the tune, though not the actual shots. Ruy Guerra, the Brazilian director of this French-German-Mexican co-production, shows a good eye for color and light, but that faculty is severely overstrained here. After the introductory sequence, with a hot wind licking at candle flames, and finally blowing highly flammable curtains into the latter, the problem soon becomes: what to do for an encore? The lead character's first sale as a prostitute -- the haggling over price, the weighing of her on a produce scale, the torrential rainfall, the slow-motion slap, and the illusory colored fish swimming across the wall -- will do well enough, perhaps. But what then? A diamond in the center of an orange? A magic touch, like Michael Jackson's in his "Billie Jean" video, that causes glass to light up? Nuns slitting a pig's throat? Footprints filling with blood? The parable-like plotline establishes little reality against which to test the irreality. And if the movie can't transport you all the way to dreamland, it may at least take you very near to sleep. (1983) — Duncan Shepherd
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