Francisca Alegría, a Chilean film director and screenwriter who studied film at Columbia University, won the best international short film award at Sundance in 2017 with an equally lengthy title, The Whole Sky Fit in the Dead Cow’s Eye. In the feature-length version, The Cow Who Sang a Song into the Future, she uses the structure of a fable to expand on the short’s theme of the damaging impact of cattle farming and the dairy industry. Several documentaries have waded into this field, including the 2014 crowdfunded Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret, later championed by Leonardo DiCaprio and shown on Netflix, and the controversial Cow directed by Andrea Arnold that shocked Cannes last May. Maybe it takes a fiction film to bring a new perspective on the cruelty of humans towards other species, and fabulist Francisca Alegría does her best to deliver that vital message of compassion in this partially successful morality tale.
Keeping some elements from her short film, such as the animals’ singing, she adds a few new characters to the script. She also changes the menacing presence of the man who comes back from the dead to a gentler, healing presence in Magdalena, a mother who committed suicide by drowning in the river and who now seeks to forgive and be forgiven. The river itself is a protagonist: a paper mill has poisoned its waters and dead fish appear on its shores. Any living creature that drinks from its toxic waters is also doomed to die.
The film sets a menacing tone from the start, as cinematographer Inti Briones captures the crawling insects, gasping fish, and sorrowful herbivores in crisp close-ups and wide angles that convey the magnitude of the environmental disaster. Pleas for animal rights are woven through this ambitious bestiarium. We learn the horrors of cows being separated from their newborn calves so humans can exploit their mother’s milk. The local beekeeper laments her empty beehives; fish and birds die and disappear. The soundtrack also plays a crucial role, as animals sing a solemn, harmonious chorus that warns of impending environmental disaster.
In this fable, the human characters are less compelling than their animal counterparts. Magdalena, the beautiful woman who reappears from the dead sporting a motorcycle helmet, stalks the family home, leaving behind some clues. We learn that she married a dairy farmer and had two children before drowning herself in the river. Her children have grown into Cecilia, a sullen surgeon, and her hapless brother Bernardo, who helps out on the dairy farm. Cecilia’s own children are her gender-fluid teenage son Tomas and his infant sister, who is content to see the world through her binoculars. Cecilia at first rejects her son identifying as female and is resentful of her mother’s abandonment through suicide. All that begins to change, however, once the resurrected grandmother/biker erupts into the narrative and the three generations interact. Magdalena also attempts to liberate the captive cows, with unintended consequences. Some of the most moving scenes involve Cecilia with the calves and cows, as she tenderly caresses their faces and holds them in her arms.
However, there is a danger of overkill in the dramatic resolutions, as Alegría walks a tightrope between pathos and suspension of disbelief. No topical stone is left unturned, and that includes indigenous rights. A handsome, long-haired Mapuche rides into the scene on his motorbike and passionately embraces the resurrected Magdalena, as her transgender grandson watches in tacit approval. The Mapuche and his eco-warriors ride off to join another land rights protest, while Magdalena comforts her grandson, who confesses he too has had suicidal urges.
Magical realism became all the rage during Latin America’s literary boom of the 1960s, but attempts to adapt García Márquez and Juan Rulfo novels to the screen have met with disappointing results. Alegría has declared that she prefers other definitions for her style blending the fantastical and supernatural with more conventional takes on reality. In her singing cows, she succeeds, but their human counterparts can’t live up to that imagined, compelling poetry.
Director: Francisca Alegría
Screenplay: Francisca Alegría, Fernanda Urrejola, Manuela Infante
Cast: Leonor Varela, Mia Maestro, Alfredo Castro, Marcial Tagle, Luis Dubo, Enzo Ferrada
Producers: Tom Dercourt, Alejandra Garcia, Andres Wood, Casey Bader, Shrihari Sathe
Cinematography: Inti Briones
Art Director: Bernardita Baeza
Editing: Andrea Chignoli, Carlos Ruiz-Tagle
Music: Pierre Desprats
Sound: Javier Neira, Sound Mixer: Jean-Guy Véran
Production companies: Cinéma Defacto (France), Wood Producciones (Chile)
World sales: The Match Factory
Venue: Sundance Film Festival (World Cinema Dramatic Competition)
In Spanish
90 minutes
