A Debut Effort, ‘Chronicles of a Wandering Saint’ Is the Work of a Visionary Filmmaker

“Chronicles of a Wandering Saint,” having barely inched its way into theaters, has already earned huzzahs for writer-and-director Tomás Gómez Bustillo. On the indie grapevine, he’s being touted as a “wow”-inducing visionary and a filmmaker who is to the cinematic manor born. There’s no doubting Mr. Bustillo’s know-how: “Wandering Saint” is a beautifully crafted movie. Yet, let’s not forget that he’s a newbie — this is Mr. Bustillo’s rookie feature and it shows.How it shows isn’t a deal breaker, but it is irksome. Anyone wanting to describe the film’s trajectory without spoiling it will have to tread carefully. Both as a story and in its form, “Wandering Saint” is strategically upset at the halfway mark. Is Mr. Bustillo at all familiar with the Roman poet Ovid and his thoughts about artmaking — that is to say, that craft should hew to vision and not call attention to itself? Our filmmaker doesn’t stumble over this truth; he thumbs his nose at it. Self-reflexivity: It’s a buzzkill.A righteous editor could wrest “Wandering Saint” from Mr. Bustillo’s hands and effect a remedy, snip-snap. Given the unlikelihood of that scenario, we have to deal with the picture on its own terms and, in the end, they are considerable. Here is a droll and deeply felt comedy, a supernatural meditation on one’s deeds in life and the ripples they set into motion. Mr. Bustillo has fashioned a morality tale suitably ambiguous for contemporary tastes but with a bedrock foundation in existing theologies. It is a humane story told with gravity and wit.It helps that our heroine, Rita Lopez, is assayed by a veteran Argentinian actress, Mónica Villa. Ms. Villa brings her stage and screen experience to the role of an older woman living toward the bottom of the economic ladder. Her home is in the sticks. She’s a good Catholic, a thorough cleaning woman, and an indispensable adjunct to the small cadre of pious women for whom the local church is a social hub. Rita is reconciled to how life has panned out.Horacio Moriassi and Mónica Villa in ‘Chronicles of a Wandering Saint.’ Via Plenty GoodBut, you know, Rita gets to thinking. Her husband Norberto (Horacio Moriassi) works nights at a local watering hole and putters around with his guitar by day. The couple have no children and their back-and-forth tends to dwindle into conversational dead-ends. The love between Rita and Norberto is real, but Rita pines for something else, something more. In an indelible scene, she considers the lives of friends as seen on Facebook; her disappointment is heartbreaking.While tidying the church one afternoon, Rita comes across a cardboard box containing a sizable religious effigy. Curious as to the identity of this figure, she does some online research and discovers that it could be a missing reliquary of Rita of Cascia, the patroness of women whose lives and hearts have been broken. With the aid of Norberto, Rita smuggles the sculpture out of the church and into their home. They subsequently alter the piece so that it aligns more fully with the accepted iconography. Is she truly convinced of the object’s authenticity, or is Rita engaging in fraud as a means of enlivening her own life and the lives of those in her community?Due to circumstances that will only be hinted at here, the audience eventually learns of Rita’s inherent goodness in a plot twist reminiscent of Alexander Hall’s “Here Comes Mr. Jordan” (1941) and done with a sense of deadpan gleaned from Hirokazu Koreeda’s “After Life” (1998). As a director, Mr. Bustillo is less flashy than either. His ambling, thoughtful rhythms are sustained and deepened by cinematographer Pablo Lozano’s often daring use of chiaroscuro. Magical realism is these men’s metier and Ms. Villa, their lodestar. “Chronicles of a Wandering Saint” is a moving debut.

A Debut Effort, ‘Chronicles of a Wandering Saint’ Is the Work of a Visionary Filmmaker

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