Aloft

I found myself often enraptured by this sad little story. Its weird narrative of faith healing serves as an intriguing diversion from the real matter at hand — the notion that grace lies in the search for help, rather than the finding of it.

Bleak and painfully earnest.

Dreariness seems to be the filmmaker's shorthand for authenticity here. Without any realism to ground it, the movie's spiritual story line feels aloft — swirling around but never dramatically landing.

Strip away its gorgeous wintry landscapes and we are left with a symphony of ponderous New Age mumbo-jumbo masquerading as philosophical wisdom.

The film's images, so continually heartrending so as to never become redundant, effectively function as visual proselytizing.

There are reasons why everyone on screen looks as unhappy as they do, but Llosa puts viewers in a place where they can’t understand precisely why, so the only choice is to sit there marinating in misery and boredom.

Llosa shoots for the stars with her oblique pseudo-think piece, but unfortunately ends up dragging her latest offering down to the bottom of the coldest, darkest abyss of cod spirituality imaginable.