Santa Teresa Y Otras Historias

Published posthumously, Roberto Bolaño's epic novel 2666, about the unsolved murders of women in Mexico, is a breathtaking journey into the dark heart of the modern world. The plot lines of the labyrinthine work, acclaimed by Daniel Kehlmann as a “wild, highly experimental monstrosity”, intersect in the fictional Mexican desert city of Santa Teresa, on the US-Mexican border, based on the real-life Ciudad Juárez. The young Dominican director Nelson de los Santos Arias has created a parallel universe in film, based on a chapter of the novel, to captivate not only readers already familiar with Bolaño's writing. Arias' associative cinematic language draws many formal registers. Abstract shots that appear to have been filmed by a kidnapped hostage with a hidden camera are interspersed with quiet, poetic settings, their meaning unfolding only gradually. Transitions between black and white and colour, between Mexican pop songs and operatic arias, between bleached-out and colour-tinted passages form correspondences to the numerous stylistic changes in Bolaño's work. With its suggestive contrasts, this documentary film noir unfolds a fascinating audiovisual space. In Santa Teresa y otras historias, the overpowering metaphor of the border is countered by a decidedly "South American" aesthetic position. Amidst the opaque web of erotica, threats and violence, a poetic reflection emerges, which orchestrates a chorus of ghostly voices based in Bolaño's multilayered text.