“Voiceover narration from Estrella as an adult — a woman piecing together things she half-understood as a child — gives the film the aura of a Michael Ondaatje novel. Estrella’s father Agustin, played with careworn rebelliousness by Italian actor Omero Antonutti, is almost a wizard character, all dowsing rods and divining pendulums. His behaviour, even at home, is perpetually cloaked in arcane symbol and portent that the child Estrella can not reason out, nor particularly cares to.”
