Utama (2022)
There's a moment in Utama where the two elderly leads simply stand and stare out across a vast, bone-dry Bolivian plateau, the sky enormous above them, the silence total. It's a genuinely arresting image. The trouble is, that moment arrives about twenty minutes in, and then a version of it happens again. And again. And again. By the time the credits roll, you've watched some of the most beautiful footage committed to film in recent years, and you've also spent considerable stretches glancing at your watch and wondering when something, anything, is going to happen.
The setup has real weight to it. An elderly Quechua couple, played by José Calcina and Luisa Quispe, are quietly living out their days in the high-altitude desert of Bolivia. It's a hard, unforgiving place, and their life in it is stripped down to the essentials: herding, ritual, survival. When the local water supply dries up, their adult family urges them to leave, to abandon the land that has defined their entire existence. That tension, between belonging and self-preservation, between dignity and pragmatism, is rich territory. Alejandro Loayza Grisi, making his debut feature, clearly knows what he wants to say. The problem is the pace at which he chooses to say it.
Honest answer: this is one of the slowest films I've sat through in a long time. And I want to be fair here, because slow cinema can absolutely work. I've got genuine affection for films that ask you to simply exist in a space and a rhythm alongside their characters. But there's a difference between deliberate stillness and narrative inertia. Utama too often tips into the latter. The dialogue is thin to the point of near-absence, and the story telegraphs its destination so clearly within the first ten minutes that the journey there starts to feel less like contemplation and more like endurance. When a film is this stripped back, predictability becomes a real problem, because there's nothing else filling the space.
That said, I'd be doing the film a serious disservice if I didn't acknowledge just how extraordinary it looks. The cinematography is genuinely breathtaking. Every frame is composed with real care, making use of natural light in a way that turns the desert into something mythic. There are shots here that look like Old Master paintings, landscapes so stark and grand they almost don't seem real. It's paired with a haunting, sparse score that earns its keep by underscoring the isolation without overplaying it. On a purely visual and sonic level, Utama is among the most impressive things I've seen in years. It reminded me a little of the disorienting, almost mythological quality I felt watching Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, that sense of a world with its own deep, quiet spiritual logic.
Calcina and Quispe are quietly compelling too, carrying enormous amounts of the film's emotional weight without much dialogue to lean on. Their performances are rooted, dignified, and entirely believable. The problem isn't the people on screen, and it isn't the landscape surrounding them. It's the script, which is so deliberately pared back that it leaves the film with almost no room to surprise you. Every beat lands where you expect it to, and when a film is moving this slowly, that predictability can be genuinely punishing.
Utama sits in similar territory to Murina for me, another recent debut that had real visual ambition and a compelling emotional core, but left me wanting just a little more beneath the surface. Films like that remind you how hard it is to sustain a story on atmosphere alone.
Two and a half stars. It's a gorgeous watch, and if you've got a high tolerance for slow cinema and an eye for beautiful imagery, there's something here for you. But if you're hoping for a survival drama with any real sense of tension or momentum, you'll likely find yourself doing exactly what I did: admiring the view, and wishing the journey there had been a bit less of an ordeal.
Rating: ★★½ | Year: 2022 | Watched: 2026-06-13
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
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Stream: Kino Film Collection
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