Machuca

Herald rating: * * * *

Director and co-writer Wood draws on personal experience to make an effective and unsentimental film that narrates the most painful events of modern Chilean history through the eyes of children.

The result is less than original: there are moments here that draw directly from Truffaut or from Louis Malle's marvellous Au Revoir, Les Enfants. But Wood is paying homage, not stealing, and anyway his vision of the 1973 overthrow of the Allende Government - that other September 11 - is imbued with a very specific sensibility and is alive to the race element that inflicts class distinction throughout the Latin American subcontinent.

Wood's experience is embodied in the character of Gonzalo Infante (Quer), a privileged but bored middle-class lad who attends an exclusive Santiago private school.

Pedro Machuca (Mateluna), a mestizo (part-Indian) boy, is one of a dozen from the city's slums who arrive at the school under an egalitarian scholarship scheme sponsored by the socialist administration. When Gonzalo stands up for Pedro against some playground thugs, a friendship is sealed.

For Gonzalo, hanging out with his new pal represents freedom: instead of covering up for his mother's infidelity and listening to his father deride the working class ("Socialism may be good for Chile but it's not good for us"), he thrills to street marches and develops a serious crush on Pedro's older cousin, Silvana (Martelli).

Thus, much of the film is lit with defiant optimism but unsurprisingly, given what happened over the next 15 years, Wood has a darker tale to tell.

The film evokes with an eerie precision the clammy tension of those junta days and the school's progressive headmaster (Malbran), though he may be a stereotype, is a potent character in the gloomy parable Wood has devised.

There have been better films about the coup; notably David Bradbury's Chile: Hasta Cuando? and the work of Patricio Guzman, in particular 1997's heart-rending Obstinate Memory which shows how much has been forgotten.

This small and affecting film doesn't have that sort of impact but its political sympathies are clear and it's an illuminating perspective on a continent we too often ignore.

CAST: Matias Quer, Ariel Mateluna, Manuela Martelli, Ernesto Malbran
DIRECTOR: Andres Wood
RUNNING TIME: 115 mins
RATING: M, contains violence and offensive language
SCREENING: Academy, Lido from Thursday