Thursday Till Sunday (12A) 96 mins ***
The pre-holiday family car
journey is a hell so universal it’s surprising it hasn’t been dramatised more
often. Chilean writer-director Dominga Sotomayor here advances from shorts to
features by packing a four-strong clan into their station wagon at daybreak for
the drive from Santiago to the coast. In the backseat, pre-teen Lucia (Santi
Ahumada) begins to spot tensions developing between her parents, and
Sotomayor’s interest looks to lie in how gender roles are constructed on these
formative outings: while father and son plough on regardless, mother and
daughter cling to diminishing reserves of patience, until alternative routes
present themselves. Very much the promising first film, it’s prone to burying
its sharper observations beneath a degree of drift, but the performers, working
almost in teams, are convincing, and Sotomayor elicits consistently charming
responses from Ahumada in particular: bored, wistful, alert to the trouble
ahead.
Thursday Till Sunday is playing in selected cinemas.
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