“The prodigy” on Netflix: 3 keys to the new Sebastián Lelio film with Florence Pugh

“El prodigio” (“The wonder”), now available on Netflix, is the new bet of the Chilean director Sebastián Lelio, winner of an Oscar for “A fantastic woman” (2017). In this new title, we travel to rural 19th century Ireland to expose the danger of being trapped in a belief system, both two centuries ago and today.

“Beliefs are extremely dangerous, you blink and you lose 50 years of conquests of social rights”, pointed out the director in reference to the setback of the right to abortion in the United States.

These are some keys that you have to know about the tape before watching it on streaming.

1. What is it about?

Starring the british Florence Pughthe film is based on a novel by Emma Donoghue, the same author of “The room” whose adaptation in 2015 earned actress Brie Larson an Oscar.

The plot takes place in the Irish region of the Midlands in 1862, where an English nurse (Pugh) is recruited to observe an 11-year-old girl, who remains alive despite going months without food, and determine if there is trick or It is a true miracle, as they believe in the people.

Lelio says that what connected him with history was the relationship created between them, that “transgenerational sorority” in the face of a patriarchal system and, on the other hand, the confrontation between faith and science, without either of them paths will help them get ahead in the situation to which they find themselves doomed.

“I try to make movies where everyone makes right and wrong, there are no villains,” says the director, “lWhat interests me is why we need a belief system to operate in a world that may not make sense.”.

2. A director to follow

Lelio began to stand out internationally with his fourth solo feature film, “Gloria” (2013), whose protagonist, Paulina García, won the Silver Bear for best actress at the Berlinale and of which he himself directed an American version in 2018. with Julianne Moore in front.

“A Fantastic Woman”, which revolves around a transsexual woman, won the award for best screenplay in Berlin and made history by being the first Chilean film to win the Oscar for best foreign-language film.

“El prodigio” has elements in common with the latter, such as the fact that it deals with female bodies in dispute by different social forces and women who take a different path to the social mandate, who represent a group of men.

3. The message of “The Prodigy”

But Lelio is more radical this time and breaks the fourth wall to influence what he believes to be the main message of the film: in times of “fake news” and “multiplicity of collective stories” on social networks, more than ever “You have to be responsible with what you believe.”

“When you decide to believe in something, you give it power, it is important to have the courage to think for yourself and consciously choose what to believe because it is an act of political responsibility”, he emphasizes.

All this reflection so in vogue about the narrative war and who controls the story, according to Lelio, is valid to analyze the social and political situation in Chile in recent years, after the social outbreak of 2019 and the apparently contradictory rejection in referendum of the new constitution.

“In my opinion, the process of writing the text was radicalized, a maximalist reading was made and the same people, with great good sense, said ‘no’, we do not want a change overnight but rather gradual, I believe that today Chile is a country more of the center left than of the extreme left, which is how that text felt ”, he points out.

“The beautiful thing is that we are in the process of writing a collective story, knowing that it must be a story capable of uniting us for the next decades, it is a difficult, challenging process and full of contradictions, but it is an admirable exercise”, he maintains.