Two Mums and One Dad: Family Portrait in Pepa San Martín’s "Rara"

Pepa San Martín's 2016 feature-length film debut Rara (Weird), is based on the true story of the Chilean Judge Karen Atala, who in 2004 lost custody of her three daughters because of her sexual orientation. Rather than centring its plot on the legal matters of the case, San Martín’s proposal concentrates on the worldview of one of the daughters, Sara, a 12-year-old girl who becomes tacitly aware of being different to the "norm" because of living with her mother and her partner. But the film’s title also alludes to the family formed by Sara’s father and his new wife, which is governed by a bourgeois and corseted order. Rara is a film about free women who are, however, unprotected by the law. This study focuses on the questioning of the normative family that the film poses and attempts to respond to this condition of "weirdness" experienced by Sara, whose particular view forms the central axis of the narrative.