A slice of life from the autumn of 1935: an aging married couple hopes for rain while waiting for their soldier son to return home. The war is the Chaco War, a territorial dispute between Bolivia and Paraguay won by the latter country in what proved to be a Pyrrhic victory: historians now see the war as the start of a series of economic and political disruptions that culminated in the Stroessner dictatorship twenty years later. The film’s vision of a rural couple isolated in space and suspended in time becomes a potent metaphor for a landlocked and impoverished 20th century Paraguay. The twin senses of isolation and suspension are conveyed by the film’s use of long takes with a static camera and dislocating disconnections between image and soundtrack. But the film also reveals sly moments of humor and despairing hope that are positively Beckettian.