Product Description

Madeinusa is a girl aged 14 with a sweet Indian face who lives in an isolated village in the Cordillera Blanca Mountain range of Peru. This strange place is characterized by its religious fervor. From Good Friday at three oclock in the afternoon (the time of day when Christ died on the cross) to Easter Sunday, the whole village can do whatever it feels like. During the two holy days sin does not exist: God is dead and cant see what is happening. Everything is accepted and allowed, without remorse. Year after year, Madeinusa and her sister Chale, and her father Don Cayo, the Mayor and local big shot, maintain this tradition without questioning it. However, everything changes with the arrival in the village of Salvador, a young geologist from Lima, who will unknowingly change the destiny of the girl.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #32458 in DVD
• Released on: 2007-08-06
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Color, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 100 minutes

Review
Madeinusa is a classically made yet personally accented fable about the clash between old and new The fact that Llosa has never directed for the camera before is remarkable considering how accomplished the film is, and how exquisite the mise en scene. Every production department is first-class. --Robert Koehler, Variety

Review
Its almost inconceivable that this ballsy Peruvian coming-of-age film was written and directed by a 29-year-old who had never even made a short before. Llosas script is so taut and original, her work with actors (both professional and non-) so natural, it feels as though it were the work of a much more experienced filmmaker. --IFC News

Review
Striking... Intellectually Stimulating... A Powerful Drama! --Neil Young's Film Lounge

Customer Reviews

The awesome debut of the 2009 Golden Bear Winner !!!
Madeinusa is the name of the protagonist of the film (Magaly Solier), a girl who lives in the middle of nowhere in Perú. Manayaycuna is her town, and poverty, the simple life of the poor, the alcoholic father, the mean sister and her animals is pretty much all what she knows.
Easter is coming and the town will celebrate it on their own way. It is not Easter but "Holy Time" over there, everyone is excited and so is Madeinusa; everyone but the young guy from Lima that got stuck there on his way to a mining camp, and has no option but to spend a few days in Manayaycuna ... with Madeinusa. Just during the time when Christ is dead ... hence, he cannot see us!

Madeinusa pictures a tale where the Christian religion got blended with- and swallowed by- andean traditions, creating their own myths and traditions like the "Holy Time" (which indeed, is just a creation of the Director Claudia Llosa, for such thing as Holy Time doesn't actually exist in the Peruvian Andes). Madeinusa will then, take you for a crazy travel for the gorgeous Peruvian Andes, through the eyes of a Lima photographer, meeting an awesome village girl inside a gorgeous but perhaps insane town, with a bunch of well pictured characters that are not that easy to understand.

But don't worry. Madeinusa is NOT a silly Andean version of Cinderella ... not at all. Madeinusa is a masterpiece of art, displaying the magic of the Peruvian Andes, the beautiness of simple people and the evil spirit of human being. Don't expect a romantic tale, don't expect a Perú's documentary. Just seat and enjoy the debut of the current Golden Bear holder and the performance of an actress, who a couple of months before the film, was actually a village girl, discovered by the Director while she was selling potatoes and other food stuff at her town ... a place perhaps not so different to Manayaycuna.

A surprising effort
A fairly macabre story that would be something more at home on the Twilight Zone or in a painting by Brueghel. A Spanish stranger from Lima wanders into an Indian village during the Holy Time, the period of time between Good Friday and Easter, when by village tradition God is dead and cannot see the sins on the villagers. They don't want him there, he's a foreigner to them, and they don't want him to witness their actions during this special time. The local mayor locks him up to protect him, but he breaks out and wanders into a world he didn't know existed and can't begin to understand, even if parts of it look familiar. Madeinusa is the name of the young woman on the cover, chosen by her father the mayor to play the role of Mary during Holy Time. She dreams of escape into the modern world of Lima, away from her brutal father who has been waiting for Holy Time for his own perverted reasons. It's a fascinating decent into Hell and takes a number of interesting twists and turns. The actors are all strong in their roles and make film all too real. The cinematography is particluarly beautiful with the Andes in the background. Well worth seeing and a very unique effort.

Suprisingly different
This film is based in the fictional indigenous village of Manayaycuna ("the town no-one can enter" in Quechua) in the Andes Mountains. Here, the indigenous people have merged their traditional beliefs with the Catholicism brought to them by the conquistadors, forming a very loose interpretation on what happens between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. In this corrupt town, God dies on Good Friday and is born again on Easter, and between those days there is no sin because 'God is dead.'

The story is centered around a "naïve" 14-year-old girl by the name of Madeinusa (pronounced Ma-den-OO-za) and a migrant worker from Lima who gets stranded in the town for the weekend. He is not welcome here on these Holy Days, and for good reason. God may not see sin, but this town certainly feels as though the outsiders can spoil their fun. A lot of reviews paint this as a love story of sorts, with Madeinusa falling for the 'gringo,' yet in my mind it is a story of a girl, who is fascinated with the stranger because he is different and she is searching for a way out. We can only guess what her life is life the rest of the year outside the Holy Days.

Throw in a father with incestuous plans and a jealous sister and you get a strange tale that will bring you to a surprising conclusion. I found this to be an interesting tale, yet feel it is important not to take away the idea that anything is inherently wrong with the cultural beliefs of the indigenous people of Peru, even if they are taken together with Catholicism. Roman Catholicism is the official religion of Peru and plays a major role in Peruvian culture, but in many areas it is intricately mixed with facets of Inca beliefs, annual celebrations of village patron saints' days often coincide with preconquest harvest observances that really gives communities their own character.