Everything old is new again, and that includes Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, or at least one of the most famous movies made about him.
Netflix has released the official trailer for the movie Ardiente Paciencia (Burning Patience), which is set to be released next month on the streamer. And if it looks familiar to movie buffs it’s because we have seen this movie before.
The movie, based on the book of the same name by Chilean writer Antonio Skármeta, was adapted into a film once before, in the 1994 Academy Award-winning movie Il Postino (The Postman). Subsequent editions of the book even bore the title El Cartero de Neruda (Neruda’s Postman). But now Netflix is going back to the books’ roots, and doing it the right way, with Ardiente Paciencia becoming the first Chilean-made movie to premiere on the streamer.
Andrew Bargsted stars in the film, which tells the story of Mario, a young postal worker looking to win over the love of his life, played by Vivianne Dietz,…with the help of poet Pablo Neruda, played by Claudio Arrendondo. The film is set in 1969, a few years before the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, with Neruda a candidate for the presidency with no real clue of what the future had in store for him, or his country.
“Nunca digas ‘Te amo’. Lo que tienes que decir es ‘Te amaré’” Neruda tells Mario in the trailer for the movie, a tiny glimpse at words from one of the most influential poets in the world, who would go on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1971 and who, despite writing in a variety of styles, is often remembered for his love poems.
It seems almost fitting that he would be the one to help the two young lovers in this movie find each other.
Ardiente Paciencia is set to stream on Netflix on December 7th.