THE STORY – In post-Pinochet Chile, 15-year-old Celeste’s carefree life shatters, making her familiar desert and coastal surroundings feel strange. As her nation transitions, sudden changes force her to navigate adulthood sooner than expected.
THE CAST – Helen Mrugalski, Daniela Ramírez, Néstor Cantillana, Mariana Loyola, Nicolás Contreras & Clemente Rodríguez
THE TEAM – Nayra Ilic García (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 98 Minutes
There’s a rare kind of film that doesn’t just tell a coming-of-age story but suspends it in time as if caught between the last glimmer of innocence and the first shiver of knowing. “Cuerpo Celeste,” the achingly beautiful debut from Chilean writer-director Nayra Ilic García, is one such film — a quiet earthquake of emotion set against a backdrop of personal and political transition. The year is 1990, and as Chile emerges from the long shadow of dictatorship, fifteen-year-old Celeste (played with startling maturity by newcomer Helen Mrugalski) faces the collapse of her own world on a sun-drenched beach by the Atacama Desert. What begins as a holiday filled with sun and youthful longing soon gives way to tragedy, and nothing — not the country, not her family, not even the ocean — will feel the same again.
From the opening sequence, there’s an undeniable poignancy to “Cuerpo Celeste.” Teenagers run barefoot toward the sea, and the camera glides like the waves themselves — hypnotic, fluid, and a little disorienting. It’s New Year’s Eve, and there’s freedom in the air, not just for the country inching toward democracy but for Celeste, or “Cele” for short, who basks in the warmth of family and the understated electricity of her friendships with Jano (Nicolás Contreras) and Simón (Clemente Rodríguez). These are friendships built on inside jokes and unspoken glances, the kind that simmers with the awkward electricity of first love. But like every sun-soaked moment — beach paddle ball, learning to drive, campfire songs — it can’t last forever.
Her mother (Daniela Ramírez) and aunt (Mariana Loyola) laugh off Cele’s teenage desires, and her parents whisper at a distance. There’s teenage frustration mixed with a bit of mystery and an unpredictable crash of devastation. When Cele’s father (Néstor Cantillana) collapses on the beach, it fractures the story like a solar flare. What was once a film brimming with warmth is now set in a state of sadness. Mrugalski’s performance deepens here, her eyes shifting from curious and restless to wounded and watchful. She carries a film of photos taken on the beach with her everywhere, a personal relic of the last days she had with her father. The absence of her father becomes a haunting presence, felt in the spaces he once filled, in the sudden coldness of the car ride where Cele is no longer allowed to drive. The once-liberating beach becomes a graveyard of memories, just as the area proves to be a graveyard of Chile’s dark past.
Shot with a sense of stillness and restraint by cinematographer Sergio Armstrong, the film leans into its own silence, creating emotional texture through wind, sea, and space. There’s an almost sacred patience to the visual language — long takes, fixed frames, the desert whispering in the distance like a memory refusing to fade. Sound design becomes its own emotional narrator: The sound of waves crashing feels like breathing; the distant wind seems to carry grief itself. Composer David Tarantino’s subtle and inward-looking score mirrors Cele’s inner world — a world that’s fractured but still searching for something whole.
As Cele finds herself at that beach once again on the eve of a solar eclipse, the film aligns itself more overtly with Chile’s own transformation. Just as the sun is briefly swallowed by shadow, so too has this girl’s life been overtaken by darkness. And yet, even here, “Cuerpo Celeste” never gives in to despair. Cele seeks comfort in many people, including her friend Jano. This period of Cele’s life involves discovering many complicated emotions, even a crush. Jano and Cele’s bond is portrayed as quite tender and unspoken, and while not a cure for grief, it’s a reminder that life still moves forward, even when it stings.
Still, the film isn’t without its limitations. The mother-daughter relationship, which simmers with complexity and quiet rage, could have been developed further. Some moments feel like preludes to more profound emotional revelations that never quite materialize. The subplot involving Simón’s documentary filmmaker friends feels undercooked, a narrative detour that doesn’t enrich the core themes. But these are minor ripples in an otherwise moving portrait of adolescence interrupted.
In its final moments, “Cuerpo Celeste” echoes its opening — a girl running toward something, perhaps away from everything. Like Chile itself at the dawn of the ’90s, Cele stands at a threshold between the past she cannot return to and a future she has yet to shape. “Cuerpo Celeste” is less about finding answers than learning how to live with the questions. Its aching stillness and sparse beauty remind us that to come of age is not just to grow up but to carry forward — even when light is shadowed in darkness.
