El rebaño de los ángeles

This thematically typical but stylistically rather wonderful Venezuelan drama starts off on the right foot and builds from there. A dirty old man is spying on a schoolgirl taking a shower. The girl’s name is Ingrid, she is 17, and though it wasn’t one of those “no clothes” showers, nevertheless the overbearing sexuality of her recently deceased mother’s lover’s presence in the Caracas hovel she is forced to call a home is just one more problem to add to the pretty teenager’s burden. The urban high school Ingrid attends must have the scruffiest uniform in the world – jeans and a tee-shirt. It’s like dress-down Friday at Grange Hill. Anyway, one morning – and this is where my grasp of the plot starts to get a little loose – Ingrid attracts the whole school’s attention from high up in the brutalist concrete atrium by singing over a song broadcast on the tannoy. I’d guess she’s singing a revolutionary standard over the top of the national anthem or something like that. Matters come to a head when refugees from the neighbouring shanty town washed away in a storm move in to the school, and riot police arrive to turf them out. Actually I don’t care about the plot, it’s the dreamy dissociated atmosphere the film builds around Ingrid that matters. Unbidden sexuality, religious enthusiasm, and student radicalism all blend together to shape her dreams and nightmares.