Young Lidia calls her home – a modest little house in the Chilean desert – an oasis. Around her are family members each more colourful than the last – Piranha, Lioness, Star, and the matriarch Boa. But dearest to the teenager is Flamingo, closer to her than her own mother. In her heyday, Flamingo enchanted and hypnotised the local miners – they say her gaze lured one of them into madness. Now, the stubbled men steer clear of their community bar, invoking the plague – rumour has it this family can make men fall in love with just a glance, only to ruin them. Lidia will come to know not only the cruelty of the world, but also its deepest beauty – she has a loving family she has chosen for herself.

What if Brokeback Mountain (2005) met John Waters and his three-million-feather queer aesthetic in the desert? What if velveteen platform heels galloped instead of horses – and instead of gunshots, there were breathtakingly fatal numbers of dance and song? The answer is right at hand – Chile’s new directorial star Céspedes made his debut at Un Certain Regard in Cannes (and took home the top prize) with a stunningly tender taco western that he presents on a brocade napkin. Weaving a surprisingly delicate tapestry of genres with a big, pure heart at its centre, along with prejudice, magical realism, pop ballads, a hint of revenge porn, and the AIDS epidemic, the film is a revealing portrait of early 1980s Chilean society. And we haven’t come all that far, Céspedes remarks. He offers viewers what may be the year’s most astonishing cinematic surprise – one that will stick to you for a long while, and restore faith in film as an all-loving embrace.