Violetta Parra a one-woman Chilean renaissance
movement was an enigma. This multifaceted
unique genius was deeply passionate about her art as she was about her love/s and
without both of them she was a sad lonely soul.
This remarkable feature film based on her son Angel’s
account of her extraordinary life shows how this obsessed talented woman born
into a poor family in a small town in Southern Chile in 1917 single-handedly
set about traveling all over the Country and became the nation’s folklorist by collecting
it's forgotten musical culture.
Her family was fiercely political and as her reputation
as a singer/activist grew she was invited to sing in Poland, and even though one of her
small children that she had left back in Chile died, she remained in Europe for
another two years. Know mainly as a
singer and songwriter she also tried her talents as a poet, sculptor, painter,
ceramist and embroider and with considerable success. She was
both the first Latin American and first woman ever to have an Exhibition at the
Louvre in Paris. In 1964 ‘Le Figaro’
noted ‘ Leonardo Da Vinci ended up at the Louvre, but Violetta Parra started
there.'
She met and fell madly in love with the Swiss flutist Gilbert Fauve who was
20 years younger than her, and when he left, she returned to Santiago, and now somewhat
as a national hero, the local Mayor gave her some land out in the countryside
for her to build a Folklore Centre. In
this large marquee she and her daughter ran an open house/restaurant where
people eat, drank and listened to her sing her now famous repertoire.
Gilbert was now playing in Bolivia and she lured him and his group back,
but by then the Centre was losing its popularity and playing to empty houses,
and Gilbert ended the affair once and for all.
Totally bereft Violetta wrote 'Gracias a la vida' (Here's To Life) which
would become of her most famous songs and then she shot herself . She was 50
years old.
She was complicated, highly-emitional and a very driven character with huge ambitions that she
felt she never really achieved, but the enormous legacy of her exceptional work
would prove otherwise.
This was no ordinary biopic and it took a phenomenal talent in the shape of
Francisca Gavilan who totally embodied Violetta, and it is her beautiful voice we
hear singing with her guitar playing and not just lip-synching to Ms. Parra’s original recordings. The movie won the Grand Jury Prize
at Sundance in January and I think that a lot of that is thanks to Ms. Gavilan's
performance.
Director Andres Wood explained
in the Q + A after the screening that I attended that every Chilean knew a
little about Violetta Parra, but not many know the whole story. I for one am thrilled that he made this
film of his so that more of us outside of Chile could, at least for 90 minutes,
share some for her talents and her energies.
She, and the movie, were a sheer joy.
★★★★★★★★★
★★★★★★★★★
