CHRONICLES OF A WANDERING SAINT - Mark Reviews Movies

Chronicles of a Wandering Saint, Hope Runs High Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 27, 2024

The woman may seem meek and completely unassuming as she cleans and prays at the chapel in her small Argentine village. In some ways, Rita (Mónica Villa) is just that. Chronicles of a Wandering Saint watches this woman as she goes about her routines, has the same meals at home before her husband goes off to work another night shift, and takes the husband's suggestion that they take a vacation to some waterfalls they visited when they were first married mostly as a reminder that she hasn't really gone far from this place over the course of her life.

There's another side to Rita, though, because she wants more out of this life than what she has now and has had in the past. Because she's so quiet and generally unnoticeable, Rita can be sneaky about that part of her, such as when she moves herself a bit to the side while kneeling in prayer at the chapel. Some regulars, part of the music group of the church, walk in and note how beautiful the sight of Rita, adorned in a perfectly aimed beam of sunlight, is. Obviously, Rita placed herself in just that position for just that response, and maybe she's not quite as clever as she believes herself to be. The musicians suspect their friend might have done exactly what she did and for exactly that reason.

This little film, written and directed by Tomás Gómez Bustillo in his feature debut, is filled with amusing details like that one. As Rita's scheme to be seen as special takes her down an unexpected path, the story's imagination grows along with it, and the film becomes a gently comedic examination of what really matters in life.

Rita's plan comes to her by chance, when she spots the foot of a statue covered by a sheet in the chapel's storage room. She assumes it must or, at least, could be something unique that would prove her worth to everyone around her.

After uncovering the statue later, Rita becomes convinced it's a long-missing statue of her namesake saint, so she covers it in carboard boxes, prepares to move the statue home, and calls her husband Norberto (Horacio Anibal Marassi) to come by the chapel. Not expecting to be transporting anything—let alone something as heavy and awkward as a statue—home, the husband didn't bother to drive to the church, meaning the pair has to lug the thing all the way to their house, taking breaks and avoiding other people along the way.

The comedy here is subdued and often unexpected, partly because it is so low-key and, as Rita's plot unravels before her, mostly because we really don't know what's coming here. Bustillo starts his story as a character study about a woman who has one foot in piety and the other in seemingly good-intentioned chicanery. At a certain point in the film, we learn for certain that Rita's intentions are good, but how on earth could we possibly know that for sure? Well, the answer is in the question in an opaque way, but we'll get to that later.

Meanwhile, Rita becomes more convinced that the statue is a sign of her faithful purity, when the local priest (played by Pablo Moseinco) tells her that, if the statue is the one that went missing so long ago, it wouldn't be a sign. It would be an honest-to-goodness miracle.

There are some problems, though. The statue doesn't seem right as Rita does more research online, ignoring and even scolding poor Norberto for trying to entertain her with his guitar (He can't play it well anymore, but the guy means well). Rita lets her husband in on her plan, and being the loyal husband that he is, Norberto helps her to "redecorate" the statue with some paint and a hacksaw. She's determined for this statue to be the key to her saintly reputation in the village and maybe beyond—even if it is a fraud.

Around a third of the way through, the story shifts dramatically. Bustillo correctly knows he has caught us off guard and unawares, too, and without describing specifically what happens to Rita and her scheme, it's impossible to miss it when the event happens. The filmmaker even starts the end credits rolling as both a cheeky joke and the plainest admission of reality. The story is finished in a way, but there's so much more for Rita to learn about herself, her life, the people in that life, and a great mystery that probably should make her plan with the statue seem completely inconsequential.

It doesn't, though, and there's a lot of humor in how Bustillo juxtaposes the supernatural occurrences of the latter part of his story with the ordinary, the trivial, and all of the little things that might not seem too important but that are the stuff of life. Without saying too much about the specifics, the story starts to involve angels, with portable speakers to play inspiring music for a sales pitch, and demons and souls stuck in everyday objects, offering an explanation for why lightbulbs flicker and moths dance around them, and sneezing fits, which might seem out of place compared to the other stuff. They don't once the story's design is revealed.

The resulting foray into the unknown is clever, funny, and bittersweet, as Rita gets what she wants and gradually realizes she might have had everything she could have wanted right from the start. Chronicles of a Wandering Saint is a strange but subtly thoughtful film.

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