Review: Argentine drama ‘The Desert Bride’ finds the beauty in an unnoticed life

A fiftysomething housekeeper’s halted journey reveals a different path in “The Desert Bride,” a sad/sweet Argentinian road trip from directors Cecilia Atán and Valeria Pivato that makes expert use of Chilean actress Paulina García’s exquisite gifts with midlife-crisis portraiture.

García, who became an international sensation as a cracked-open divorcée in “Gloria,” explores a different form of awakening as Teresa, a dutiful maid/nanny to a wealthy Buenos Aires family who is unceremoniously being sent across the country to a new job in San Juan. When the bus breaks down in the desert near a pilgrimage destination for worshipers of a sainted mother, the slightly addled Teresa loses her travel bag in the tiny town’s marketplace.

Melancholic about an existence left behind (handled with beautifully subtle flashbacks), feeling lost yet determined, she seeks help from a gray-haired, friendly itinerant salesman nicknamed El Gringo (Claudio Rissi). As he drives her around in his van, their search — and his gentle probing of her personality — creates a temporary companionship that eventually reveals, against a simultaneously harsh and beautiful arid backdrop, the unexplored woman beneath the lifelong servant.

“The Desert Bride” is nothing complicated, but in its unforced humanity, visually poetic landscapes and agreeably metaphoric storytelling suggests the intimate pleasures of a well-turned short story. And leading it all is García, who doles out Teresa’s wounds, smarts, worries and epiphanies with an abundance of gestural nuance and an abiding respect for the lives of hidden women everywhere.

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‘The Desert Bride’

In Spanish with English subtitles

Not rated

Running time: 1 hour, 18 minutes

Playing: Laemmle Royal, West L.A.; Laemmle Playhouse 7, Pasadena

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