Solemnity adds to the humor of this wry comedy which takes to task the overimportance of smalltown mores, fed by equal parts tradition and confusion. In a provincial Andean town in the late '50s, a teacher (Frank Ramirez) and a butcher (scriptwriter Humberto Dorado), once friendly compatriots of the opposition, have vowed (we know not why) to kill each other in the town square by midday. This gives them the morning to prepare for death-a chore that each does in his own fashion. "I can't absolve you for a crime you haven't committed yet," the priest tells the butcher, holding out his hand and with it, the possibility of a change of heart. The teacher, "a well known non-believer," busies himself settling matters with his kind landlady and an unkind bureaucracy that, like so many, is run (and financed) with a personal "touch." Meanwhile, the butcher's beautiful wife (perhaps the raison d'être of the duel), in blissful ignorance carries on as if she were in a different film altogether while their young son gets his first taste of adult hypocrisy as he tries to stop the carnage. As the townspeople prepare for a circus minimus, the mayor (and magistrate on alternate days) sums up the legal side of things: "Two less votes for the opposition." This lushly photographed parable of political self-destruction is based on a true story. Details of a Duel was selected for New Directors/New Films 1989. Sergio Cabrera's second feature, Snail's Strategy, is soon to be released.