Thursday Till Sunday

Directed by Dominga Sotomayo
In UK cinemas April 5th, 2013

by Katharine Fry

Thursday Till Sunday opens with a night-time shot through a girl’s bedroom window. Her father comes in to carry her out to the car. Ten-year-old Lucia joins her seven-year-old brother Manuel and parents Ana and Fernando for a long weekend road trip. They will visit a number of beaches and a plot of land once owned by Fernando’s father. Ana asks Fernando where he will stay, suggesting with his brother or friends. Fernando insists he will find an apartment. And so, from the claustrophobic interior of a car set in stark contrast to the vast Chilean landscape that surrounds it, we watch a family slowing making their way to an inevitable final destination.

Director Dominga Sotomayor’s debut offers a portrait of childhood rich with the backseat feeling of being left out of the frame and not fully grasping what’s going on. We spend the majority of time in the car watching the children fidget, chatter and play to while the hours. Rapt in their innocent games, both seem oblivious to the impending sense of separation.

Only when the children are clinging precariously to the roof rack, enjoying the rush of the road do tensions finally overflow in the car. We join Lucia looking through the top of the windscreen to see her parents arguing, their words are silenced by the glass but their gestures are clear. Navigating Chile, a long thin country, we understand that this journey can only go one way.

This is a road movie that definitely doesn’t roll at a mile a minute. With no major bumps in the road, the story unfolds through a series of evenly paced and well-observed moments. Definitely one for the slowphiles.