Directed by Andrés Wood

Chile 1973. The democratically elected communist government of Salvador Allende is struggling to keep society going, with shortages, strikes, raging inflation and increasing disaffection of the middle classes.  But Gonzalo, a sweet-faced pre-teenager, is only concerned with his school and the adulterous activities of his mother.

His school, the very posh, private, 'English School', St Patrick's, run by Irish priests, has embraced the socialist notions of the government and not only runs its own small farm to help finances but also takes in several boys from the shanty towns close by its own the leafy suburb.  One of these, Machuca (Ariel Mateluna), becomes the special friend of Gonzalo, who finds an escape from his discontent with the family life of his often absent left-leaning father (Francisco Reyes, a dead ringer for Cliff Thorburn), roving mother and pouty teenaged sister with her right-wing tosser of a boyfriend. His new friend introduces him to life with the street-wise Silvana (Manuela Martelli) and her father who live by selling things on the street, particularly and ironically flags and banners to both sides of political demonstrations.

Andrés Wood has recreated a convincing world that is very recognisably the 70s of the beige wallpaper, haircuts, fashions and make-up of the affluent middle class world-wide. And clever computer work over the long shots of Santiago has removed modern additions such as new buildings and satellite masts. The menace of civil disorder is encapsulated in the graffiti along a wall Gonzalo passes on his way to school - at first it reads 'No to Civil War', then the 'No to'  is eradicated , followed finally by a sinisterly clean and blank wall, signifying the clean-up operations of the Pinochet-led coup.

We see these clean-ups in action, too, in the shanty town, where people are marched off to become the disappeared, and in the school where certain boys are called out of class and not seen again. Although there may be a little too much time devoted to life before the coup, there is no doubting the harrowing power of the film's portrayal of collapse of a society that in part looks so like our own as to make one shiver at the ease at which it disintegrates and is remade in fascist mode. Symbolism is used lightly but to great effect - the burning of the diseased school pigs, the gifts of the rich patron of Gonzalo's mother (tellingly, American Lone Ranger stories), the importance of clothes  - the film opens with Gonzalo putting on his school uniform, and it is his middle class clothes that ultimately save him, whereas Machuca always wears the same clean but holey jumper. And the priests who have been in civvies during the good times appear in cassocks as they make their last protest against the new school regime.

Gonzalo is beautifully played by Matias Quer, all plump cheeks and freckles, no hero, but an ordinary boy not quite understanding the full import of what is going on around him. There's a lovely, poignant scene where he watches more in wonder than terror as low flying military planes cross the city skyline en route for the president's palace and assassination. The director Wood was himself nine in 1973, and no doubt remembers the events from a slightly younger standpoint.  Fifteen more years of the Pinochet-led, US supported nightmare were ahead for those surviving, a few days for those who 'disappeared' into the killing ground of the Santiago football stadium, where shamefully many national teams, including Scotland, were to play soon afterwards, FIFA having declared, as shown in a newspaper in the film, that life in Chile was 'back to normal'.  A heartbreaking film, in its portrayal of broken friendships and a broken polarised society, but lifted at the end by the credits showing that it was financially supported by the present Chilean government. Time passes, things do change.

Seen at Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle, June 2005