Vibe
Navidad isolates three Chilean teenagers in an almost-empty house outside Santiago on Christmas Eve and lets the holiday become a temporary suspension from family structures. Aurora and Alejandro arrive as a couple already near collapse while sorting through possessions in the house of Aurora's dead father. They find Alicia, a younger girl who has run away while searching for her own absent father. As the three talk, drink, explore attraction and improvise a small Christmas celebration, their separate forms of loneliness begin to overlap. Sebastián Lelio treats Christmas less as inherited ritual than as a night the characters can remake for themselves. The improvised tree and shared isolation create a chosen, unstable intimacy that would not exist if they returned to their ordinary families.
Watch for
- The improvised dialogue and naturalistic interaction among the three leads
- The makeshift Christmas tree as chosen ritual
- Aurora's grief over her father and Alicia's search for hers
- How the empty house becomes a temporary world outside ordinary family control
Production notes
CineChile records Sebastián Lelio as director, Lelio and Gonzalo Maza as screenwriters, a 99-minute running time, Spanish dialogue and a Chile-France production. The film was shot in Santiago and premiered internationally in the Directors' Fortnight at Cannes in May 2009 before its Chilean release in August. Cineuropa reports that Lelio used a screenplay without fixed dialogue and shot more than 75 hours of material, allowing the actors' interactions to develop with unusual spontaneity before extensive editing. Benjamin Echazarreta served as cinematographer, while Lelio and Soledad Salfate handled editing. The production's intimate process matches the film's enclosed, exploratory emotional world.
Trivia
- Sebastián Lelio directed the film.
- CineChile lists a 99-minute runtime.
- Lelio co-wrote with Gonzalo Maza.
- The film premiered in Cannes Directors' Fortnight in 2009.
- It was produced as a Chile-France coproduction.
Legacy
Navidad occupies an important early position in Sebastián Lelio's career before internationally prominent works such as Gloria and A Fantastic Woman. It also belongs to the wave of Chilean cinema that gained strong international festival visibility in the late 2000s. The film's queer and sexually exploratory elements make it a rare Christmas story centered on young Latin American characters seeking temporary freedom from family expectations. Its festival pedigree is stronger than its general-audience recognition, so its seasonal legacy remains limited.