When a movie about a pyromaniac sociopath opens with a shot of the burning traffic-light she set ablaze and ends with her refilling a gas can at a petrol station, as Pablo Larraín s Ema does, you know you are in for a scorching experience.
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THIS movie blockbuster is different from what that description usually signifies.
Set in Valparaiso, Chile, its narrative follows a complicated domestic relationship between Ema (Mariana Di Girolamo) and Gaston (Gael Garcia Bernal). She is lead performer in a dance troupe; he, 12 years her senior, is infertile. They adopt a troubled young Colombian boy, Polo (Cristián Suárez) but give him away after he sets the family home (and Ema’s sister) on fire.
Ema takes refuge with her girlfriends in a street-dancing community formed around reggaeton – the sensual Puerto Rican style synonymous with dancehall, hip hop and the city’s working class, which Gastón despises as “hypnotic music that turns you into a fool”.