Director Cristián Jiménez brings a keen comic sense to Chilean author Alejandro Zambra’s contemporary classic novella Bonsái, crafting an existential romance with deep insight into the psychology of love, finding meaning through literature and caring for sensitive plants. Making several leaps forward and backward in time, the film follows its protagonist Julio in his sincere but deadpan fumbling through early adulthood. Quirky, cerebral, lost and vaguely traumatized, Julio enters into the one big love of his life lying about having read Proust and oblivious that his lover Emilia is fibbing, too. Eight years after meeting her, Julio begins another romantic relationship with a lie when he claims he is transcribing a handwritten novel for a famous writer. In truth, he’s the one writing the novel. As it unfolds, he gradually comes to realize that he’s the book’s broken-hearted subject, pining for Emilia, and no amount of wisdom, Proust or gardening skill can bring back the bliss of his first love. Bonsái strikes the perfect balance of humor and angst, wisdom and folly, and brings home a universal emotional truth—though the story Julio tells may be idealized, delusional and partially fictional, nothing has more power to move his soul.

Read the San Francisco Chronicle review "A melancholy story of romance and regret with moments of drollery and sweetness along the way."

TRAILER

Chile/France/Argentina/Portugal 2011, 95 mins. Written by Cristián Jiménez. Photographed by Inti Briones, With Diego Noguera, Natalia Galgani, Gabriela Arancibia. Strand Releasing. In Spanish with subtitles.
Tickets $9 for SFFS members, $11 general, $10 senior/student/disabled. Box office opens June 14 online at sffs.org and in person at SF Film Society Cinema.