Sand Dollars
Description
In the small seaside city of Las Terrenas, in the Dominican Republic, Noeli (Yanet Mojica), a local in her early 20s, navigates a complicated relationship with a wealthy, much older woman, Anne (Geraldine Chaplin), whose drifting expat existence forms a counterpoint to her young lover’s daily hustle. That hustle includes other players: briefly, an older Frenchman who takes his leave, and, more significantly, Noeli’s steady boyfriend, Yeremi (Ricardo Ariel Toribio), whom she passes off to a willfully, wistfully ignorant Anne as her brother. There’s pathos in Anne’s fragile, poorly constructed delusions about a relationship that is, to a large if undisclosed degree, transactional, but also in Noeli’s attempts to hold together the starkly disparate pieces of her life. In the hands of writing-directing team Israel Cárdenas and Laura Amelia Guzmán, the drama records these quiet tensions but skirts judgment, making a measured, almost delicate exploration of the cultural intersections resulting from the island tourism trade. Gorgeously filmed scenes of the women swimming, dancing in nightclubs or whiling away the afternoon in Anne’s idyllic beach hotel have a lyrical quality—the dreamy landscape presenting a lovely, haunting backdrop for their melancholy tale. —Lynn Rapoport
Born in Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic, Laura Amelia Guzmán (left) attended film school in Cuba and now splits her time between the Dominican Republic and film partner (and spouse) Israel Cárdenas’s (right) home of Mexico, where the two run the production company Aurora Dominicana. Sharing writing and directing responsibilities, Cárdenas and Guzmán have made two features, Cochochi (SFIFF 2008) and Jean Gentil (SFIFF 2011), and one full-length documentary, Carmita (2013), in addition to their most recent film, Sand Dollars. All four films have screened at festivals around the world, garnering multiple awards.
Trailer
//player.vimeo.com/video/122138215?autoplay=1Film Details
Language Spanish, English, French
Original Language Title Dólares de arena
Year 2014
Runtime 85
Country Dominican Republic/Argentina/Mexico
Director Laura Amelia Guzmán, Israel Cárdenas
Producer Laura Amelia Guzmán, Israel Cárdenas, Benjamín Domenech, Santiago Gallelli, Matías Roveda, Pablo Cruz
Writer Laura Amelia Guzmán, Israel Cárdenas
Editor Andrea Kleinman
Cinematographer Israel Cárdenas, Jaime Guerra
Music Ramón Cordero, Edilio Paredes
Cast Geraldine Chaplin, Yanet Mojica, Ricardo Ariel Toribio