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Mirage Movie Review

Mirage (Espejismo) is a 1972 Peruvian drama film directed by Armando Robles Godoy and starring Miguel Angel Flores. It is a very unique, highly artistic film.

A young man inherits a broken down estate at the edge of the Peruvian desert with no explanation about the former owners or what had become of the once thriving house. This was a rare movie from Peru that premiered in festivals back then and was exceptionally well regarded. It remains among the country’s most famous pictures and for some great reasons.

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Mirage is an acquired taste. It is one of those movies that most cinephiles would enjoy, but not the general public. It has almost no story and the plot that it does have is very minimalist and subtle. It represents minimalism to the extreme. Sometimes this did not work, but often times it worked as the atmosphere was so strong.

Yes, watching this movie you are transported to the deserts of Peru, a country with incredible diversity of natural landscapes. The cinematography on display here was truly astonishing. On the one hand, this desert can look harsh and even ugly, but the movie was so beautifully shot and competently made across the board that the end result is one of the more beautiful films from this decade. The camera movements are particularly accomplished.

The score is another highlight. The audio cues perfectly accompany the movie’s visuals. The score is both grandiose and poetic, fitting the tone of the picture superbly. The atmosphere is one full of whimsy and dreamlike qualities as watching the movie you feel like you are transported to somebody’s dream or a different planet altogether.

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But the movie also has its realistic and dramatic moments. Armando Robles Godoy doesn’t always mix the two perfectly, but the emphasis on winemaking, picking grapes and even a sensual love affair all led to a distinctly Latin movie that you would rarely witness anywhere else in the world. Mirage is well edited and paced with an incredible ending, but it has a slower beginning and the lack of dialogue did make the story difficult to grasp at times.