For once, there's an actual "we" behind the royal SFist first-person plural -- SFists Rita and Wendy went to see Play on Wednesday night, and were told, kind of challengingly, by SFIFF staff they would only give us two tickets if we were both reviewing the movie. We accept your challenge, SFIFF!

Here's a brief summary of the plot, so you can follow our dialogue: Lonely Cristina finds depressed Tristan's stolen briefcase at the beginning of the movie, takes his cool cigarette lighter and iPod, and begins stalking him through Santiago.

Rita: So what'd you think of the movie? Like I said to you afterwards, it really reminded me of a Chilean Amélie, where a cute but strange young lady (Cristina) brings humanity back to troubled neighbors -- but as you know, I think Amélie Poulain is a sociopath. I liked Play, though, and I really liked the music. What'd you think?

Wendy: I liked it, too. I really liked how colorful (literally) it was -- the furniture, the fashion, even Santiago, Chile itself. it was a good kind of kooky, with the music and the parts of the film that itself played like the video games in the arcade where we first meet Cristina. I found myself thinking that i want an iPod like the one she found - one where the batteries never seem to run out.

The music was great - did you catch who it was?

More dialogue between SFists Rita and Wendy after the jump.

R: Yeah, the whole iPod as metaphor for isolation/connection was all cool and contemporary, I thought -- though I kept thinking, "is there only one album on Tristan's iPod or what?"

I also really liked how well the characters were drawn -- you got a sense about even the people you didn't see very much of, like the GOB-like magician dating Tristan's mother, or the creepy Russian guy that Tristan's ex-wife is seeting. I wish a little bit more had happened in the movie, and I felt like I spent a lot of time piecing people's stories together -- in that way the movie was more like a series of short stories -- but who knows, maybe PLAY will do for Santiago what Amélie did for Montmartre.

W: You're right that it was challenging piecing the characters together. There were a few that I was left wanting to know more about. But that challenge is also one of the things I liked about the movie, and gave it some of the "urban" feel. You know, you see the same people on MUNI or walking down the street on a regular basis, but never really get to know them. I guess it's a universal phenomenon in big cities, although I always picture South America to be friendlier, more neighborly than the U.S.

See, SFIFF? We did both review the movie!