Flowing between languages-French, Spanish and English-and film styles-narrative, documentary, first person-Marilú Mallet creates a portrait of her life as a Chilean exile living in Montreal, itself a city of two cultures. Using a diary format, she finds film equivalents for thinking out loud, musing over one's day, one's life, preserving a moment. The film is constructed out of short scenes-encounters with friends and other exiles (including Isabel Allende), and time with her family-and it has the feel of "jottings," reflections that vary in tone and depth, yet are honest encounters with feelings, events and changes. Mallet's husband, an Australian, is also a filmmaker with a different attitude towards his film work, a different language and different values. Tellingly, these contrasts become a part of the film, for Mallet's diary is unfinished both in the sense that it is an ongoing project of contemplation of her life, and that it is unpolished. No metaphoric coat of paint covers up the conflicts between the materials from which her life is constructed.