Pamela (Roxana Blanco) is your typical wallflower: She's a 34 year old
virgin who works at a supermarket checkout, and her boring looks seem to
exactly reflect her dull life, the highlights of which appear to be the
weekly visits to an obscure church. But when a mysterious stranger (Walter
Reyno) shows up at the supermarket day after day, always giving her extra
change (and that means tons of money), her life starts to change,
eventually culminating in her friendship with a transvestite, Katia
(Nicolás Becerra), who seems to be the complete opposite of her:
Katia is outgoing where Pamela is shy, is feminine where Pamela is
asexual, is exciting where she is dull ... and against all odds, Katia
starts to teach Pamela to enjoy life and open up to the world.
But that's only one aspect of the story, because on the other hand
by and by, Pamela starts to see signs - both in the real world and in her
dreams - that would point to her as the bearer of the next Messiah (after
all, she's still a virgin), and eventually, she and Katia are both
convinced she's pregnant and begin looking for a suitable surrogate father
for her kid - but when one such candidate proves to be an utter
disappointment, the mysterious stranger comes after him, and Pamlea, who
has since turned her back on her church, starts to believe the stranger's something
resembling the holy spirit. Eventually, Pamela starts her own church ... The
concept of Alma Mater is interesting, to say the least, and the
film is kept alive by a certain self-irony as well as great performances
by Roxana Blanco and Nicolás Becerra - yet in all, the film is not very
good: Its deliberate slow pace often stands in the way of its story
rather than getting a point across, many scenes portraying Pamela's dull
life should have been trimmed because they are just that, dull, and some
of the film's symbolism is a bit heavy-handed while its directorial effort
is a tad too uninventive to iron out the boring spots. That all said, Alma
Mater has its moments, but as a whole it promises more than it
delivers.
|