The setup to Wishlist may suggest a sad film; but in fact it’s a real treat.
As they undergo chemotherapy together, Eva (María León), in her twenties, meets chemotherapy veteran Carmen (Victoria Abril), who over some weeks encourages Eva to join her in writing a list of three things she would like to do before learning whether the treatment has been successful. When Carmen suggests that they fulfil their wish lists on a road trip together, Eva decides that this would be a better use of their time than simply awaiting their fates. If you don’t fulfil your greatest wishes before you get your cancer results, when will you?
Meanwhile, Eva’s best friend, Mar (Silvia Alonso), having lost all hope of having a baby with her partner, has left him and needs distraction. So Mar joins Eva and Carmen, and the three set off in a large campervan on the adventure of a lifetime, their individual wishes as various as sleeping in a desert, kissing a stranger, and spending a night in a gaol cell, their deepening friendship underlying their burgeoning adventurousness. But adventurousness means opening more opportunities for fate to strike — and she does.
Whilst the adventures of these larger-than-life women are funny, the real payoff in the film is the mix of down-to-earth responses the women have to one another and to the unpredictable accidents that land them in the soup.
The variety of escapades and exotic scenery, the leads’ likeability, the spontaneity with which they live to the full, and the ways in which the unexpected both overturns and fulfills their plans all combine to make Wishlist a movie guaranteed to give you a lift. See it while you can.
Screening at Palace cinemas.
— JOHN P. HARVEY
