Undertow

[lsanderson]

El Calvo Films
Manolo Cardona, left, and Cristian Mercado in Javier Fuentes- León’s “Undertow,” about a fisherman and his ghostly lover.
Constructing Happiness With a Carnal Ghost
By MANOHLA DARGIS
Published: November 25, 2010

A small movie with a full heart, “Undertow” takes an old idea — the loving, lingering ghost — and gives it reverberant, resuscitated life. The story unwinds gracefully and with slow-building emotion in a tiny seaside village in remotest Peru, where, save for a few modern conveniences, people live much as they probably did decades earlier, pulling fish from the sea and bound by communal interdependence. There, a young fisherman, Miguel (Cristian Mercado), awaits the birth of his first child, an event that fills him with so much happiness that he shares his bliss generously with his beloved wife and his more adored male lover. More