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Contains strong languageFunny but sad, ironic yet compassionate, Play is the engagingly assured feature debut from Chilean writer/director Alicia Scherson. Set in Santiago, the rather bitty plot bounces between two worlds-apart people: poor country girl turned nurse Cristina (Viviana Herrera) and well-off architect Tristan (Andrew Ulloa). The pair's paths overlap when Cristina finds Tristan's binned briefcase and decides to trace/stalk its owner, who's just been dumped himself. But this isn't so much a will they/won't they story, more an imaginatively observed study of class, contrasts and big-city living.
For a film that deals in isolation, depression and, in one segment of its jigsaw narrative, mortality, Play is certainly playful. The novel opening credits give a foretaste of the invention to come, ranging from dream imagery to a scene where the soundtrack seesaws as the camera pans between two iPod wearers. Scherson even throws in a couple of comically stylised fight sequences, including a hilarious three-way between Tristan, his ex-wife and her new lover.
"AN UNDERTOW OF MELANCHOLY"
Some of the characters are a hoot, too, like the cafe couple with matching bird tattoos, or Tristan's eccentric blind mother (Coca Guazzini). But there's also an undertow of melancholy that takes firmer hold as Tristan sinks towards rock bottom. Though a bit of a wimp, you can't help sympathising with his woes (abandoned, mugged, forced to endure mum's amusingly sleazy magician boyfriend). More memorable, however, is Cristina; headstrong, inquisitive, handy with kung fu, she makes an intriguingly oddball guide to the colourful terrain Scherson maps out with wit, flair and empathy.
