Lina from Lima review – portrait of a migrant worker doesn’t hold together

With a background in documentary, writer-director María Paz González makes her narrative debut with Lina from Lima, an admirable attempt to illustrate the interiority of a migrant worker who left home ten years ago. It succeeds as a character study, yet the film, incorporating fantastical musical sequences, is too unfocused and tonally uneven to really inspire a connection.

Lina (Magaly Solier) is a Peruvian woman in Santiago, working as a housekeeper for a largely absent and wealthy Chilean man. This leaves Lina as the pseudo-mother figure to her employer’s young daughter, and helping with her competitive swimmer. Throughout the film we see how Lina’s life revolves around serving other people, including buying Christmas presents for her spoilt teenage son back in Peru.

González doesn’t frame Lina’s situation as some grand modern tragedy, an approach that would inevitably come across as patronising. Instead she shows how poor working women like Lina must put up with small yet persistent setbacks and frustrations. Even the tiniest of inconveniences add to the pile.

When her shared temporary accommodation falls through, Lina finds herself secretly staying at her employer’s plush empty home. Enduring the skin-clinging plastic cover of the mattress through sex and sleep, the film presents a potent motif on how Lina's personal needs and desires are compromised by her duty as a worker.

Lina is not defined by self-sacrifice, however. Attempting to take advantage of the privacy afforded by her squatting, she pursues casual hookups via dating apps. These scenes highlight her desire for intimacy in a society that constantly takes. González walks an unconventional route by incorporating fantasy musical numbers. These quick sequences are peppered throughout the film to give voice to Lina’s thoughts and feelings in a way that would be otherwise impossible given the social realist style.

All the parts are here for a great film, yet they never come together in a satisfying way. Lina is a compelling enough central character, and there's some solid theming in the script that indicates González’ idiosyncratic observations as a screenwriter. But the film is neither funny enough to inspire mirth, nor dramatic enough to stir the emotions. The musical numbers are an admirable attempt at shaking things up, but feel perfunctory to the main action and only add to an overall sense of tonal unevenness.

One can see the potential in González’s vision. Perhaps in her next project, the ambition glimpsed in this film's genre-mixing will coalesce into a more rewarding whole.

Lina from Lima is now showing on MUBI.