Much the same high sky heads toward horizons receding forever before occasional vehicle-eating highways that undulate cold and dusty barren uplands. A few crossroads, gas stations, a town or two of medical clinics, shops, bars, convenience stores and, in this midst of desperate loneliness for most, spare laconic people who are humane and humorous, living stripped essentials of love, loss, longing. Yup, it might be the Rockies and North Central U.S. of the Brothers Smith's The Slaughter Rule or the Polishes' Heartland USA trilogy.

But nope, it is southernmost Argentina, Santa Cruz Province of vast Patagonia, nearer the Falklands and Tierra del Fuego than to Buenos Aires, famous but unknown and unvisited, every bit as effective a sobering backdrop in Carlos Sorín's Minimal Stories/Histories mínimas, from a Pablo Solarz screenplay.

While maybe no more than a PR stretch, the claim is that the idea arose when, filming a commercial in the area, the director dismissed his actors and replaced the entire cast with local, mostly nonprofessional people. There is, in any case, a rare unselfconscious spontaneity, including only seconds-long (don't blink) standout performances by an uncanny mongrel dog and a baby (Francis Sandoval).

Indicated by the explanatory title, there are stories in the plural, three of them, which are "minimal" in the Sherwood Anderson sense of being uncomplicated even while they intertwine and cross in natural yet ingenious ways. By various methods, and for different reasons, making the two-hundred-mile trip from minuscule FitzRoy township to the coast "city" of San Julián, three travelers may acknowledge each other -- or refuse to do so -- or be unaware of another's close presence (in a pretentiously French-menued hotel restaurant), as their stories are revealed piece by piece.

Justo Beneditti (Antonio Benedictti), "Grandpa," escapes from his son and daughter-in-law to walk the distance to recover Badface/Malacara, the mutt that abandoned him three years ago following an act of moral cowardice. In scarf, watch cap and new blue-shoelaced, yellow-beige climbing boots from some passing Dutchmen, Don Justo wiggles his hairy ears in (as a neighbor film writer remarked) a striking resemblance to an elfin elderly Harvey Keitel.

His is the central tale, reminiscent of the episodic journey of The Straight Story, as he encounters kindness, disinterested concern and insistent biologist Julia (Julia Solomonoff), who agrees that animals do indeed differentiate between right and wrong.

Aided by friends and traveling with her baby, María Flores (Javiera Bravo) also goes to the city, selected as a contestant on the hilariously imagined Channel 12 game show, "Multicolored Casino." By chance, she will return on the same bus as contented, already sleeping Don Justo but not notice Roberto (Javier Lombardo), who walked near her in the restaurant and whose car whizzes happily by just as she boards. Roberto is a salesman, most recently of Swedish FatAway slimming plasters, whose radio-accompanied "Strangers in the Night" rings comically Brooklyn. Spouting self-improvement slogans, he is obsessively insecure, fussing over a soccer-ball/turtle birthday cake with which to win over a child and thus its widowed mother's heart.

Minor players enter and leave -- the biologist, the attractive young widow, bakers and their wives, a foreman (Aníbal Maldonado) presiding over workers' music and meal, a rural policeman's mother-in-law (Rosario Vera) -- and the heart of things is discovered in surprising, almost throwaway lines. Small acts, objects, even names, appear, reappear to tie all even further -- an ex-soccer star's and a child's shared Christian name; a dashboard bobble-head dog, a turtle cake and cheap makeup kit; $50 (fifty pesos), once stolen, once offered after a contest, once paid and removed from a music box; realistically ridiculous TV programs throughout, gawked at, avidly commented on.

These are wonderful people and faces but no tricks or special effects, no wardrobe or wisecrack innuendo, only stories about humble life and small joys and hopes -- the other side of the coin from so much mindless film fare foisted on the public. Low-keyed, with little financial backing, Minimal Stories will have trouble with theatrical distribution here. Luckily, one can catch it as part of LatinBeat at Lincoln Center, September 5-28; if not, hope that it comes to an art-movie theater near you.

(Released by Ocean Films; rated "PG-13" for language.)