Diario a Tres Voces (Three Voices)
by Otilia Padua
Mexico, 2012
synopsis
“In the beginning everything is beautiful…”
Three Voices tells the love stories of three women of different generations: a teenager, a middle-aged divorcée, and a 90 year-old great grandmother. Each character is introduced in their personal spaces, which are not only physical interiors but memories, personal archives, and a constellation of objects woven around them. During their daily rituals, the women reveal their expectations, dreams, fears and disillusionment. The film reflects on the ephemeral nature of romantic love, the beauty of enduring familial love, and the solitude and loss that accompany both. Love is not only the victim of time but also of the character’s expectations changing through the time.
The stories of romance unfold in rooms with different colors and textures. These feminine and sensual worlds are shown through the eyes of the three women. The film is structured around the spaces where they live, have loved and been loved. Home videos, old wedding videos, photographs and letters help to construct each narrative and give texture to the generation each of the women belong to: 2010, the 80’s, and the 30’s. By borrowing the color palette of 1950’s Douglas Sirk’s technicolor melodramas, and through the fairytale-like animations, the film contrasts the notion of never-ending and idealized romantic love with the reality of our own relationships.
about the directors
Otilia Padua is a Mexican director. She studied architecture at Cambridge University and the Architectural Association, London. Her works include Tzolkin (2003), Heaven Mirrors Everything (2006) and Three Voices (2012), which screened at SXSW, Ambulante, Morelia, DocsMX, Margaret Mead Film Festival, Documenta Madrid, Lima Film Festival and FIDBA Buenos Aires and Birders (Netflix 2019). Otilia is part of the Berlinale Talents and the Guadalajara Talents. She has been a grantee of the National Arts Fund, the Mexican National Film Institute and the Sundance Institute. She is currently in post production for feature length hybrid documentary, The Queendom (WT) about two indigenous scientists working with fungi, that has the support from Sundance-Sandbox, the Redford Center, the Doc Society Climate Fund and the first Look prize at the Hot Docs Forum.
