Synopsis
Lucía is a young woman who works as a seamstress in a factory and lives with her father in an old house in Santiago, Chile. The film occurs in December 2006 during the weeks that take place from the ex-dictator Pinochet’s funeral to Christmas. Through the simple observation of Lucía’s daily life, the spectator is allowed access into a hidden and neglected world of a generation of Chileans striving to recover from the military dictatorship.
The film begins just before the former Chilean dictator Pinochet’s funeral and ends on Christmas Eve. Although a political element exists in “Lucía” it appears to only interrupt Lucía’s daily life tangentially, it is never dealt with explicitly in the film. Instead, the main substance of “Lucía” deals with the unseen influences of Chile’s political history and how they mix with Lucía’s personal desires, her fears and unspoken longing.
“Lucía” unites methods of fiction filmmaking with frame by frame animated photography sequences. We are maneuvered through Lucía’s workday at a textile factory, her relationship with her father Luis at home and into situations that are marked very subtly by remnants of historical events that continue to influence contemporary Chilean society. On Christmas Eve, Lucía and Luis dress up as Santa Claus and Santa’s helper and entertain the children of a doctor currently under suspicion for working as a torturer during Pinochet’s regime. These events never reach an explicit conclusion and leave the spectator in the same situation as Lucía, that of mystery rather than concrete resolution.
Like the house that Lucía inhabits for most of the film, seemingly detained in time since the 1970s, Chile itself is filled with similar characteristics; dark and untouched territories, remnants of the traumas of its past. In this environment, Lucía struggles to keep up the household, support her unemployed father and at the same time, nourish hopes for her own future.