By Anna Marie De La Fuente
Chile’s Paulina García, winner of the Berlinale Silver Bear for her performance in Sebastian Lelio’s “Gloria,” is poised to direct her first feature, “The Passion According to Carmen” (“La Pasión según Carmen”).
Described as “the coming-of-age story of an adult woman” it follows Carmen, a journalist, whose life appears – at least on the surface – to be happy and stable. She has close friends, a comfortable life and is married to Nico with whom they have a 20-year-old daughter. But Carmen is bereft over her grandmother and best friend, Mar, who has died.
On her 50th birthday, Carmen follows her estranged daughter to a feminist protest, where a rock to the head sparks an unexpected awakening. Rescued by a group of women and taken to Santiago’s Museum of Pre-Columbian Art, she meets Lina and is drawn into a sensual, liberated world, triggering a profound transformation.
“This is Carmen’s passionate, perimenopausal, curious, rebellious, funny and intense process of shedding her skin and crossing to the other side, driven by the ghost of her grandmother, the conflict with her daughter and the confusion that comes with an uncontrollable desire for another woman,” the synopsis goes.
