As an American who has spent several years visiting back and forth Ecuador I thought it was a wonderful movie. The dialog between Esperanza and Tristeza keep the viewer interested and Jesús and later Andrés add much to the film. The vistas of Ecuador are beautiful and a picture says a million words. As a high school Spanish teacher I found it an excellent source when we talk about dialects of Spanish. As a teacher of high school I am very picky about what I show to the students as I don't want to show inappropriate films to them. This picture was pretty much a PG-13 film based on using the f word once and there are introductions to the person that a narrator makes that use inappropriate information such as her first period or his first orgasm....Nevertheless, overlooking those few seconds of inappropriate for high school material showing this film is an excellent idea, I just fast-forwarded that stuff which again takes up very little less than 1 minute. I highly recommend it to teachers or anyone who would like to see what Ecuador looks like in the countryside and have a very good plot. My AP Spanish students loved it and my wife from Ecuador was cracking up when she saw it. Super pleno.

I have not seen a movie that portraits and demystifies the contemporary Ecuador, particularly in Quito and Cuenca, both Andean cities. The dialogue in this movie is extremely clever, and it captures the subtleties of culture, especially language. Esperanza, a woman from Barcelona, Spain visits Ecuador, where she meets Teresa in a bus going from Quito, the capital, to Cuenca. During their trip, they face a strike and continue their trip on foot. They meet Jesus on the way, who in my opinion is the best actor in this film. Teresa, who tells her impromptu friends that her name is "Tristeza" (sadness), wants to stop her boyfriend's wedding in Cuenca. My only issue with this movie is the end, that lacks a resolution and seems pretty vague. The soundtrack by Nelson García is superb. In the end, watching this movie is like reading a great book; it is open to many interpretations.

I saw this movie at the Latin American Film Festival at the AFI and i found it to be a very sweet film. The story is similar to any other "on the road" movies that you've probably seen but it is still funny, warm and engaging. It's interesting to see the interaction between the idealistic (clearly upper class) college student with her activist views and the carefree Spanish tourist. It's also entertaining to see how they both react to the various characters they encounter while on their journey. The beautiful Ecuadorean countryside is also a wonderful added "actor" in the movie. I highly recommend this movie to those people who like quirky independent movies.

This movie is an example of the way of living in Latinamerica. It allows us to taste what its like to be a "visitor" and to be a "local/resident", and how that changes the way to see, to understand things and specially, to understand the latinamerican society. Makes you laugh if you are a person that comes from this particular reality called: Ecuador. The romantic part of the film allows us to see the different "social classes" where everyone need a last name, a friend or just money to be someone, remembering the public that the are places of the planet that treat differently some people, although we may know all about "equealty", the Bill of Rights, the Letter of the United Nations and of our own Political Constitution.The Director of the film tried to show something: a country where anything its possible, a "wonderland" where there is no order, or respect to any rule, or logic, so options are unlimited situations -most of them funny ones-, and also the political reality of, not only Ecuador, but of Latinamerica today.A great independent work, a piece that show how Ecuador is seen in other places of the world.