Madeinusa

Modern-day urban values mix and clash with small-town life in Madeinusa, Claudia Llosa's remarkable debut feature about a city stranger's encounter with an innocent beauty living in an isolated village in Peru's Cordillera Blanca mountain range, a region characterized by religious fervor. Madeinusa is a 14-year-old, sweet, Indian-faced girl who lives in a dirt-floor house and dreams of the world beyond the village. It is the custom of her town that from Good Friday at three in the afternoon (just when Christ died on the cross) through Easter Sunday, sin does not exist. God is dead, and the village folk can do whatever they feel like. On the eve of this time of small-town debauchery, Salvador, a young geologist from Lima, accidentally comes to town. The town greets him with curiosity and ire, then imprisons him out of fear that he will interfere with the festivities. But Madeinusa, ever curious about things from the big city, is drawn to him, and her fate begins to turn in unexpected ways. Palpable, intimate, and vibrating with the vivid textures of rural Peruvian life, Llosa's delightfully simple narrative operates on powerful metaphorical levels. Madeinusa heralds an exciting new cinematic voice and captures the complicated mix of passion, willfulness, and longing that is innocence.