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Patagonia (2010)

Director: Marc Evans

Time Out rating

Average user rating

8 reviews

Movie review

From Time Out London

There’s a fascinating movie to be made about the Welsh settlement in Patagonia, an isolated community clinging to the language and traditions of its homeland. But Marc Evans’s drab, soap opera-like melodrama, which tracks two pairs of characters as they make life-altering trips across the Atlantic, is not that movie. While troubled Welsh couple Gwen (Nia Roberts) and Rhys (Matthew Gravelle) bicker their way across the pampas, elderly Cerys (Marta Lubos), born to a Welsh mother, brings her teenage neighbour Alejandro (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart) back to Wales to find her family homestead. Evans’s eye for landscape is impressive, and there are some gorgeous moments, contrasting the sparse quiet of the high desert with the lush green of the valleys. But his focus on this quartet of dull cardboard cutouts makes the film predictable and tedious, and it all wraps up in an unconvincing would-be emotional climax.

Author: Tom Huddleston

Time Out London Issue 2115: March 3 - 9, 2011

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User reviews of this film

Audrey Butterfuss said...

Posted on Mar 14 2012 07:53 Middlebrow. Attractive scenery but the characters and plot are implausible and the resolutions sentimental and simple. Also full of hoary old cliches (joy = dancing in the rain) and too long.

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Nordic Queen said...

Posted on Feb 20 2012 21:38 Beautiful, lyrical, engaging, well paced, artistic greatness

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Aphaydn said...

Posted on Apr 11 2011 23:16 I enjoyed this film in many ways- the photography is brilliant, the acting is first class, the sub-titles are well presented without distracting from the photography and the music delightful, Some commentators have suggested that it drags in the middle and could be 20 minutes shorter. I can understand English monoglots having this view. As a Welsh speaker with some knowledge of the settlement in Patagonia, I did not find this to be the case. I found the film to be very moving and it brought tears to my eyes when the old lady and her young companion eventually arrived in the area where her ancestors lived and experienced the warmth of the welcome of the family they met, only for her to discover that the farm where her mother came from was now under the water .

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Dam Reit said...

Posted on Apr 06 2011 22:55 Wonderful film. Beautiful. Engaging.

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L said...

Posted on Apr 05 2011 21:46 lOVED THIS FILM! It was beautiful, the stories engagine and the music will stay with you after you left the cinema. I saw it at a Cinema, and do go if you can - but def get the DVD when it is out. Really not a thing to say against it. If car chases are your thing, perhaps give it a miss.

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Rob said...

Posted on Mar 10 2011 00:28 I've just seen this film and fortunately hadn't read this review before going. I couldn't disagree more, the relationships between the couples in the two stories mature slowly but with the rich surroundings and convincing stories I was captivated throughout. The most beautiful movie I have seen in years.

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hastor said...

Posted on Mar 07 2011 18:52 Great film, however doesn't come close to how great the story of the settlement is. There should definitely be an 'epic movie' about the Welsh moving away from industrialised UK, dominated by English culture, and how they survived on a 3month journey on a ship, and arriving Argentina with farmland that was unusable.

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Jim said...

Posted on Mar 03 2011 22:31 no opine71 you are wrong - get your facts right. Rhys plays a different role.

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