What went awry? The simplest answer is that you can’t tell this story-the chronicle of a South American family from 1926 into the ’70s-in one rushed two-hour-and-11-minute movie. The greatest actors in the world can’t overcome a script that boils everything down to the Esperanto of cliche. A brutal right-wing patriarch (Irons)! A clairvoyant, ethereal earth mother (Streep) and a lonely spinster aunt (Close)! A handsome revolutionary rabble rouser (Banderas) and the rebellious daughter who falls in love with him (Ryder)! Though set in a mythical South American country, this story is rooted in the tragic history of Chile. (The novelist is the niece of President Salvador Allende Gossens, who died in a coup d’etat much like the one in this story.) But one never feels the rhythms or smells the scents of a particular culture. This German-produced movie, shot in Portugal and Copenhagen by a Danish director with an English-speaking cast, aims for universality. What it achieves, too much of the time. is inauthenticity.
