The Movie Teller (Spanish: La contadora de películas) is a 2023 comedy-drama film directed by Lone Scherfig from a screenplay by Walter Salles, Rafa Russo, and Isabel Coixet based on the novel by Hernán Rivera Letelier. It stars Bérénice Bejo, Antonio de la Torre, Daniel Brühl, Sara Becker, and Alondra Valenzuela. It is a Chilean-Spanish-French international co-production, and follows a story where a girl's gift for recounting the events in Hollywood movies transforms her family's fortunes in rural 1960s Chile.
Plot
Set in a mining town in the desert of Atacama in the 1960s, against the backdrop of political change in Chile and the decadence of salpetre mining communities in the country, the plot tracks the plight of María Margarita, a young woman possessing the gift of telling movies, who thereby becomes the resident "movie teller".[2][3]
Walter Salles was the driving force behind the project, with an involvement of more than 10 years.[6] The film is an A Contracorriente Films (Adolfo Blanco and Manuel Monzón), Selenium Films (Vincent Juillerat), Altiro Films (Andrés Mardones) and Contadora Films AIE Spanish-French-Chilean co-production, with the participation of RTVE, TVC, and Euskaltel-Telecable and backing from ICAA, ICEC, and Crea-SGR.[5][6][2]
According to the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, The Movie Teller has a 90% approval rating based on 10 reviews from critics, with an average rating of 6.7/10.[11]
Steve Pond of The Wrap wrote that "in its happiest moments", the film "is glorious and yes, a little corny; in its darkest ones, it's still lovely and sad".[12]
Pete Hammond of Deadline Hollywood deemed the film to be "a must-see" for movie lovers everywhere.[13]
Maggie Lovitt of Collider gave the film a B+ rating, deeming it to be "a love letter to the community that grows from the seeds of storytelling".[14]
