‘Utama’ Review: Home Is Where the Water Is in Breathtaking Bolivian Character Portrait
Peter Debruge Chief Film CriticWhen one is asked to picture those who are are most impacted by global warming, the imagination flashes to Inuits on a melting ice floe or Maldives natives threatened by rising tides, not Bolivian shepherds who graze their livestock on the Altiplano, nearly 12,000 feet above sea level. But the residents of these remote highlands are also endangered, as director Alejandro Loayza Grisi reveals in his sublime, quietly elegiac feature debut, “Utama,” focusing on an elderly couple who refuse to relocate to the nearby city of La Paz, even as mountain glaciers melt, rains become less reliable and their herd of llamas slowly succumb to dehydration.Played by actual couple José Calcina and Luisa Quispe (authentic, nonprofessional actors whom Loayza Grisi had to convince to participate), long-married Virginio and Sisa share a small mud house without electricity or running water.