Mía Maestro appears in The Cow Who Sang A Song Into The Future by Francisca Alegría, an official selection of the World Cinema: Dramatic Competition at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Inti Briones.
One of the common narrative threads running through this year’s Sundance Film Festival is how outside forces – from technology to the environment – can shape and define families.
The Cow Who Sang a Song Into the Future, the feature film debut of Chilean director Francisca Alegría, approaches that theme from a profoundly spiritual vantage point. A river in southern Chile is being polluted, killing the fish population and sparking furious protests. It also resurrects the spirit of Magdalena (Mia Maestro), a woman believed to have died by suicide years ago. Magdalena’s traumatic encounter with her widowed husband spurs their adult daughter Cecilia (Leonor Varela) to return to the family’s dairy farm with her two children. Her eldest child Tómas’ (Enzo Ferrada) identity as a trans woman disturbs Cecilia, another rift in a family left in tatters by several of them. Magdalena’s spectral presence is initially disruptive as the pollution that revived her, but it ultimately forges a path of reconciliation for the family she left behind.
Alegría balances the film’s supernatural and natural worlds with striking, beautiful confidence that maintains the integrity of both. She imbues the atmosphere with a markedly ethereal aura, communicated through the soothing score and impressive cinematography. Even when the camera isn’t capturing the stranger happenings, you get the sense that some unknowable force is guiding this pocket of the universe. When Alegría works the mystical elements into the story, her foundational work allows the real emotional power to shine through. She crafts a space where getting choked up over a cow singing a mournful song about motherhood is an entirely reasonable experience.
Of course, there’s a narrative reason for that dying cow’s sad song. The Cow Who Sang a Song Into the Future is about parenthood and how it can perpetuate generational trauma. Witnessing Magdalena’s death as a child profoundly impacts Cecilia. It compelled her to distance herself from her father and brother. It also influences her relationship with Tomás, particularly her refusal to accept or engage with their transition. Cecilia and Tomás’ strained relationship is the most acutely felt, especially with how Tomás seeks, and finds, comfort in their grandmother’s otherworldly embrace.
Alegría’s exploration of familial trauma does leave room for healing. Rather than mire the family in the unresolved misery of the incident that changed them forever, the film offers sweet catharsis for everyone, through Magdalena and including her. Alegría uniquely subverts the haunting ghost trope, choosing instead to grant Magdalena the agency that her life lacked and the ability to resolve some of the pain her absence caused. Again, the film’s ethereal atmosphere does beautiful work here, grounding these moments in serenity and sincerity that feels real and earned.
The Cow Who Sang a Song Into the Future may sit at the nexus of fantasy and reality, but it boasts beautifully grounded performances. Magdalena is virtually wordless, but Mia Maestro communicates so much without words. Her performance fits well with the film’s mystical tranquility, but she registers Magdalena’s more visceral feelings – passion, anger, devastation – with a distinctly human ferocity. Leonor Varela has less freedom of emotion but does a great job showing how deep Cecilia’s repression runs. Enzo Ferrada is the film’s bright light, living Tomás’ truth and journey with moving, unapologetic honesty.
Of the films I’ve seen at Sundance grappling with family, The Cow Who Sang a Song Into the Future feels particularly poignant. Even at its most intangible and strange, the film radiates hope and release. It encourages you to believe that unimaginable crisis – ecological disaster, suicide, a parent who won’t see you – doesn’t have to be the end of the story, that there is a path beyond it, even if you can’t see it right away. It’s a message that he feels remarkably right, especially at this time.
The Cow Who Sang a Song Into the Future had its World Premiere in the World Dramatic Competition section of of Sundance Film Festival 2022.
Director: Francisca Alegría
Writer: Francisca Alegría, Fernanda Urrejola and Manuela Infante
Rated: NR
Runtime: 98m
Rating: 5 out of 5
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A late-stage millennial lover of most things related to pop culture. Becomes irrationally irritated by Oscar predictions that don’t come true.
