Violeta Went to Heaven

Gavilán’s performance bears out Parra’s advice to “hate mathematics and embrace chaos,” and falls between private and public, assurance and self-doubt.

Francisca Gavilán's lead performance burns with a dark radiance that's anything but self-congratulatory.

Mr. Wood has created a poignant portrait of an artist unable to escape the stamp of her class or the burdens of aging.

The biographical bits soon feel like a distraction from the music, performed by Gavilán. It’s heard often, but not often enough. Judging by the movie, Parra’s songs are fiery and haunting, sometimes sensuous, sometimes bleak. When Parra sings, the movie becomes worthwhile.

A rare Chilean film that doesn’t mention either the Allende or Pinochet regimes, Violeta Went to Heaven is a love letter to a lost 20th-century goddess. It’s hard to resist her.

Suffers from an overtly conventional way of depicting the life events of an anything-but-conventional woman, a lazy flaw further highlighted by its brief moments of visual experimentation.

By inexpertly filtering her art through her travails, Wood and Altunaga reimagine Parra's suicide as an explicable conclusion to her turbulent life.