The romance of sand and the realism of dollars sit elegantly side by side in this thoughtful movie which is set in the Dominican Republic. Sand Dollars tells the story of an older American woman in an unequal lesbian relationship with a much younger local.
Gently moving with raw performances by Geraldine Chaplin and Yanet Mojica and a quietly powerful and haunting ending that compensate for lack of depth in the screenplay.
Guzmán and Cárdenas present this tropical island as both Anne's romantic refuge and Noelí's exploitative landscape, a beautiful, enchanting -- and realistic -- Eden where snakes are merely snakes.
It respects and plumbs the feelings of all three main characters while surfacing the economic, ethnic, cultural, and gender power imbalances in their relationships.
Shot solemnly, the film feels a little cold and distant. However, among other things, it's worst seeing just to enjoy the view, the culture and the music the Dominican Republic has offer. [Full review in Spanish]
It's a film with a restless motion, a film about people in transit (on motorbikes, on foot, in life), in which the question of whether to stay or whether to go, and if so where, takes on a special, existential resonance.
Playing out against a dreamy Caribbean backdrop, Sand Dollars is indeed about dreams, unpicking those of a gracefully aging lady and her young lover with a trembling delicacy and attentiveness.
The movie lacks rythym, it's repetitive and all over the place, it stops the narration falling in love with itself and at the end it tries to pull off a Nouvelle Vague ending that's really predictable. [Full review in Spanish]
