RELYING ON A claim by the adolescent Silvana (Manuella Martelli) that "kids and drunks never lie," director Andrés Wood recounts the story of the year preceding "Chile's September 11" from her perspective. Loosely based on Wood's own recollection of the events surrounding Pinochet's coup, Machuca spends considerable time delineating the complexities of class division in Allende's Chile. As the old order attempts to reconstitute its forces, Santiago's poor rally behind their beloved but beleaguered socialist icon, increasingly aware of the looming threats from the right. St. Patrick's, a prestigious Catholic boys' school in the heart of Santiago, is home to liberation theologian Father McEnroe (Ernesto Malbran), who is busy assembling his own crucible of class tension (exacerbated by youthful hormone fluctuations). Pedro Machuca (Ariel Mateluna) enrolls in the school on scholarship, eventually bridging class and cultural divides to befriend upper-middle-class Gonzalo (Matias Quer). The two navigate the rocky landscape that temporarily unites their worlds, and must come to terms with the irreconcilabilities of their experiences as the world around them unravels and everyone is forced to choose a side. According to Wood, Machuca is the first film to retell the events of this period made by someone who actually lived through them, and the results unearth an emotional reality of a unique revolutionary period in world history. This contribution provides an excellent companion to the astonishing Battle of Chile, which uses documentary footage to excavate some corresponding political realities. (Rachel Odes)