Wind with the Gone

Argentine director Alejando Agresti directed this surreal, allegorical Argentine-French-Dutch- Spanish comedy-drama. Winner of the Golden Shell Grand Prize at the 1998 San Sebastian Film Festival, the absurdist tale is set during the '70s. Young Buenos Aires cabdriver Soledad (Vera Fogwill), tired of fending off molesting passengers and dealing with her exploitative boss, keeps driving her cab straight out of the city and into the mountains, arriving at a remote and dusty Patagonian village, Rio Pico. The town's only contact with the outside world is a cinema which shows film reels out of sequence or upside-down -- as referenced in the title's reversal of Gone With the Wind. This has impacted on local inhabitants, causing them to speak in non sequiturs. Soledad checks into an inn run by Doña Maria (Angela Molina), and when locals find out she was a journalism student, they ask her to host their newsreels about life in Rio Pico. Her new job as news anchor leads to a romance with film critic Pedro (Fabian Vena). Doña Marie finds love blossoming when faded French film star Edgar Wexley (Jean Rochefort) arrives in town as a result of massive amounts of fan mail. Village scientist Antonio (Ulises Dumont) makes regular jaunts to Buenos Aires with his discoveries (such as the theory of relativity), only to be told these were previously discovered in earlier decades. Change comes to Rio Pico when electricity and television arrive, and the town's magical, idiosyncratic appeal begins to fade. Also shown at the 1998 Chicago Film Festival. Spanish and French dialogue.~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide