Patón Bonassiole (Esteban Lamothe, from El estudiante) is a 35-year-old soccer player for Talleres of Remedios de Escalada, and he’s not precisely going through a stroke of luck: he committed a foul and so he’s been banned from playing for eight matches. Not only that, considering his age, he has to face it will soon be time to retire. Something which his wife Alejandra (Julieta Zylberberg) agrees to — plus, rather than considering it any kind of misfortune, she sees it as the chance for a fresh new start. By the way, Patón and Alejandra get along quite well and haven’t lost an inch of passion, so their new future can only be encouraging. It’s up to Patón to make up his mind and say goodbye to the only life he’s known for so long. El 5 de Talleres, written and directed by Adrián Biniez (Gigante) is, on the surface, an examination of the everyday life of a soccer player at the end of the line. How is he supposed to let go of a profession that gave him his very identity? What is he to do in order to become somebody else, and yet keep being himself? What are, in fact, his choices? None of these questions are addressed in an existential manner, which is not to say they are tackled superficially either. Adrián Biniez trusts viewers to understand the process by exposing bits and pieces of run-of-the-mill activities now seen under a different light. It’s about observing in a very well detailed fashion, nonchalantly and with a contagious sense of humour. Often a low key comedy, El 5 de Talleres is also a gentle study of a loving couple, their quirks, codes and understandings. The fact that Esteban Lamothe and Julieta Zylberberg are real-life partners adds to the chemistry provided by the smart screenplay and precise direction. Their gripping performances, together with those of the rest of the cast, add verisimilitude to a scenario that becomes more and more familiar as new decisions are made. With a downplayed tone and a smooth rhythm, Biniez’s second opus eschews big meanings and big gestures, but it’s not about dry minimalism either. It’s actually kind of hard to say where it exactly lies, and that’s likely to be an asset for a seemingly small film that says more than what it seems.
In Voley — the new film written, directed and starred in by Martín Piro-yansky — Nicolás (Piroyansky), Pilar (Inés Efrón), Cata (Vera Spinetta), Manuela (Violeta Urtizberea), and Nacho (Ricardo “Chino” Darín) have been close friends since their teenage years. Now, they are in their mid-twenties and are still friends, although they see life with different eyes. As New Year’s Eve approaches, Nicolás invites them all to celebrate it at his family’s summer house in Tigre. So off they go, with one unexpected guest: Belén (Justina Bustos), a friend of Manuela’s ever since childhood. One more point to consider: there’s a love affair as well, for Nacho is actually Cata’s boyfriend. Soon enough, there will be more sexual allure in the air, as each one in the party goes for their object of desire. And to think that once they were just innocent friends... But it’s time for unforeseen urges. As far as light-weighted youngster’s comedies, Voley does meet most of the genre’s expectations. It has about a dozen of amusing scenes that unfold effortlessly, it’s rather well acted by the entire cast (special praise goes to Piroyansky and Urtizberea), it keeps a swift pace from beginning to end, the dialogue is well written and many times witty, and most of the jokes and punchlines are delivered with good timing. If you are to take it a string of anecdotes and episodes that nonchalantly draw a portrayal of these youngsters (including drinking alcohol, smoking marihuana and snorting cocaine, all of it in small doses) Voley does the trick — even when three or four jokes are plain dumb, and not in a good way. And yet halfway through it, let alone once you’ve reached its ending, you can feel Voley needs a stronger screenplay: one that can hold all these anecdotes together and join them into a picture of a larger scope. A screenplay with a central plot in which the subplots may converge and say something else other than what they say separately. But since that’s not the case, no wonder why, you may feel you’ve been shortchanged. And while the characters are not heavily stereotyped, they do not have many personal traits either. A couple of them, Belén and Cata are in fact underwritten. So in a sense, Voley misses on a good opportunity to shine in a genre tackled not that often in local cinema. Yet, it does have its undeniable assets as well.
Give or take, your average Hollywood terminal disease is made up of the following ingredients: a graphic depiction of the worst symptoms of said disease, a good number of blows below the belt, a melodramatic approach to the patient’s long pain, exploitative and manipulative manoeuvres to gain the viewers’ sympathy, an awful deterioration of the patient, some moments of implausible triumph over the disease, a heavily sentimental tone throughout, and a life-affirming message — despite it all. Think of The Faults in Our Stars, My Sister’s Keepers, Letters to God, or Dying Young. All of them are unabashedly intent on making the viewers weep and experience catharsis so they can leave the movie theatre feeling they’ve felt the right thing. To a large degree, Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland’s Still Alice doesn’t indulge in almost any of these ill-fated choices. Based on Lisa Genova’s novel, Still Alice follows the tribulations of Alice (Julianne Moore) a nearly 50-year-old talented linguistics professor who after experiencing symptoms of memory loss is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, albeit in its early stages. Hers is a very rare case, as most people only get the disease in their late sixties or early seventies, but nonetheless it will unfold as any regular case. Cleary knowing how she will end up and somehow accepting it, Alice still puts up a fight in order to remain the person she’s always been for as long as possible: a person with an identity, in touch with her loved ones, and with much cherished memories. So instead of being your average Hollywood terminal disease, Still Alice eschews most of the obvious traits that would’ve turned it into a miserable tearjerker. Yet it does resort to some needless sentimentality to stress dire circumstances that are already hard to endure. Not that it is undue, but the point is whether it’s truly necessary or not. I believe it’s not. On the other hand, it portrays some stages of the disease in a moderately controlled manner. And I’d dare say there are no blows below the belt. Viewers’ empathy is gained through the simplest means: by straightforwardly exposing Alzheimer’s different stages until the very end. Then again, to tone down the ending suggesting she can hold on forever to some memories of love is not exactly fair — even if it’s meant to be poetic and not literal. And the life-affirming, well-meant message conveyed through Alice’s public testimony at a convention feels like Hollywood stuff more than anything else. Plus the screenplay’s examination of the entire affair is not as complex as you’d expect from a drama that could have certainly been more layered and nuanced. Sometimes Still Alice doesn’t probe deep enough — and it doesn’t want to. But the best news is that Julianne Moore’s compellingly underplayed performance, for which she won an Oscar for Best Actress, is to be praised. Granted, these are the kind of roles that the Academy tends to favour — instead of her more complex part, and better performance, in Cronenberg’s disturbing Maps to the Stars — and yet Moore raises significantly above the standard and always takes a step back when many other actresses would have gone over the top. At the same time, she manages to be as vulnerable and aching as you’d think her character is. It’s her who really makes a difference here.
It’s become commonplace to say that Erica Rivas is a riveting actress, more so after her performance as a disappointed and vengeful bride in the Oscar-nominated Wild Tales. Nonetheless, commonplace is often true, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that she excels in Jazmín Stuart’s second opus Pistas para volver a casa. Juan Minujín is also a gifted thespian and delivers an equally compelling performance as her older brother. The same goes for Hugo Arana and Beatriz Spelzini as Rivas’ and Minujín’s father and mother. Granted, their roles are far from complex, but that doesn’t make their acting any less convincing. Pistas para volver a casa is the kind of film where actors truly make a difference for the better. Here’s the storyline in a few lines: Pascual (Juan Minujín) and Dina (Erica Rivas) are two siblings reaching their forties who were abandoned by their mother, Celina (Beatriz Spelzini) when they were children. Their father, Antonio (Hugo Arana), has never recovered from it and is all alone. On a given day and out of the blue, he embarks on a journey to find her, but has an accident on the road. Dina and Erica rush to help him and Pistas para volver a casa becomes a modest road movie. And while the trip shouldn’t be that interesting in itself since it’s only a vehicle for the characters’ inner discovery, the stops have to acquire some weight. Which they never do. As for the screenplay as well as its tone, the situation is rather different. Most of the time, Stuart’s feature is a dramatic comedy that manages to switch from laughs to tears, from lightweight fare to more insightful stuff. So the fact that the transitions are well established is a plus. Then there are zones when it goes for more hectic and strange occurrences and so it becomes a kind of adventure film. And there’s also room for going down memory lane as the characters reflect upon their past in a melancholic manner. While the comic sequences, which sometimes verge on the absurd, do work very well and are sometimes very funny, the dramatic parts are hard to swallow as they cover overworked territory to the point you can predict the characters’ lines and actions with little effort. Although you can buy the humour easily, the rest rings false more often that not. And the more depth the film tries to reach, the shallower it actually becomes. Not a nice paradox. Though it should be noted that some scenes, as the one where Spelzini recalls a painful past event, is touching because she makes it believable. As for the adventures, let’s say they lack enough drive, and the nostalgia feels formulaic. And that’s that
I’s been said that Marine Vacht, the arresting beauty who plays Isabelle in François Ozon’s subtly enchanting Jeune & Jolie (Young and Beautiful) surely reminds you of Catherine Deneuve’s Sev-érine in Luis Buñuel’s Belle de jour, which is true. But she’s also bound to remind you of Sue Lyon as the title character of Stanley Kubrick’s Lolita. In any case, think of a lethal combination of the two and you’ll have a pretty good idea of who Isabelle is. But only on the surface. She’s only 17 and right after she loses her virginity in a not-too-memorable way with a German boy not that much older than her, she develops a quick penchant for high-class prostitution. That is after an older man who spots her after school wants to give her money for having sex, and though she rejects him, she seems to wonder what it would be like. That’s reason enough to become a prostitute by day during weekdays and a school girl by the evening and during weekends. One by one, mature men become infatuated with her beauty, her apparent innocence, her alluring sexuality. One by one, they make her rich. But on an ill-fated day, something ominous happens when she least expected it: in a matter of seconds, Isabelle is about to face more than a few tribulations, to her family’s distress and her own pain. Coming from Ozon, don’t expect a film on why and how a young girl becomes a prostitute, be it from a psychological, an existential, an emotional, or a social outlook. Don’t expect an explanation for her behaviour, as it seems even she doesn’t have one. Least of all, don’t expect a critique of anything at all. If there’s anything that may point out that something is not in the best shape that would be the loneliness, the lack of affection and iciness of Isabelle’s customers. But that’s their problem, and it doesn’t include all of them. Instead, what you have here is an observation of the afternoons of a nymphet driven by the law of desire. A diaphanous portrayal where the reasons for said behaviour remain elusive throughout, and yet there’s a contagious allure of unusual intensity. Not that it’s expressed out in the open with big gestures, but delicately conveyed — and sometimes not so delicately — with smooth and soft strokes. And if you insist on trying to find out why she does what she does — because it’s not that she needs money, on the contrary — maybe you’d better ask yourself why not. Consider that sex itself is not really what gets her off. Think that its depiction is largely left out of the picture. Instead, you could say the pleasure lies in how she conceives sex, how her desire is articulated, what she feels when she’s with an older man, and why she has a right to her own desire, whichever that is. And there’s also room for something far more ungraspable. Although the ending could be rather predictable, it still makes sense in the best of ways. Arguably, it’s the only possible ending. One more thing: from time to time, Young and Innocent even dares to be tender in a restraint manner. And it still pays off.
In the fabulously written and consummately directed new film by Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Distant, Three Monkeys, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia), winner of the Golden Palm and the Fipresci Award at Cannes), there’s a former actor-turned writer, Aydin (Haluk Bilginer) who has a weekly column at a local, unimportant newspaper. He has been trying to write a book on Turkish theatre for quite some time now. He also owns an isolated hotel and is the landlord of a house in the Anatolian mountains, whose tenants are many months in arrears in their rent. Aydin claims he was a free spirit in his youth, yet how much of that is true remains to be seen. He certainly is no iconoclast now. He’s unyielding, demeaning, unaffectionate, and unconfident. But he puts lots of inconspicuous effort in looking laid-back, flexible, caring and secure. To a certain extent, he believes his own act. This is why his sister Necla (Demet Akbag), a divorced woman still in pain, never ceases to point it out in a seemingly fair , yet ultimately brutal manner. She’s also uncompromising, but unlike her brother, she has nothing to do in her life and sits around the house all day. She has moved to the house which once belonged to their father to get over the divorce and make a new start. Instead, she blames Aydin’s temper and bossiness for her idleness and emotional, when not existential, discomfort. There’s also Aydin’s much younger wife, Nihal (Melisa Sozen), who has achieved nothing on her own and is no longer in love with her husband. However, unlike Necla, she’s found the next best thing: she’s become a philanthropist (with her husband’s money, that is). She too has hidden (and not so hidden) complaints and longings, and is sometimes unafraid to speak up. Yet, for the most part, she is almost completely eclipsed by her husband. Add a drunken and violent tenant, his unemployed and unproductive brother, and his brother’s son, a young, resented kid who won’t utter a word. There’s also a disillusioned friend of Aydin’s, who’s buried his wife a long time ago and whose sister lives far away. Other characters come into play, but it’s better to discover them as you get involved in a series of a long, nearly perfectly-articulated intellectual conversations and emotional verbal exchanges in which these people scrutinize and judge each other unremittingly. Other times the dialogue is about the futility of good intentions, the impossibility of turning malevolence into goodness, the destructive effects of the passing of time, the tediousness of everyday life, which holds no surprises, the inner crisis that make you stumble and fall, and the transformation of past dreams into present cynism. This is, among other things, seamlessly woven on a large canvas. And although the characters do criticize each other heavily, Ceylan never casts a judgmental gaze on them. Smartly, he’d rather leave it up to viewers to respond to this scenario. This is, indeed, a very distressing film. Consider that you are often witness to algid, cerebral discussions that quickly swift to heated arguments addressing particular and universal questions. As is the case with accomplished chamber pieces, the performances are as compelling as they can be. It’s not only how they speak their lines, it’s not only the minor and major gestures, it’s not only the gazes, but, equally impressive, their use of silence as aneloquent dramatic device. The editing makes each shot last exactly what it has to so as to keep the story flowing swiftly. And we’re talking about a film that runs 196 minutes, which actually feel like 120, 130 minutes, at most. There’s only something to regret, which is not a serious flaw but not a minor one either. It’s not too rare that the dialogue is “too well written,” as in common conversation, but rather from a novel or a play. When this happens, you tend to disbelieve the raw realism Ceylan achieves so well. As this only happens from time to time, it may be disregarded for the sake of a film that goes unexpected places with unusual depth and lucidity. Best of all: it never tries to be enlightening. That’s the stuff minor filmmakers go for.
“I've always been surprised by the small number of works in the last 25 years about the US invasion of Panama, be it in literature, cinema and any other art form. It feels as though collective memory has been filed away and long forgotten.} “This documentary, perhaps the first one made by a Panamanian, is a good opportunity to address an almost untouched collective trauma, and to analyze why so little has been said about it,” says Panamanian filmmaker Abner Benaim about his documentary Invasión. Rather than a cold research including facts, numbers, archive footage and so-called objective information, Invasión goes for the memories of all kinds of Panamanian citizens, from the indigent residents of the El Chorrillo neighbourhood, more privileged ordinary people to famous personalities like boxer Roberto “Mano de piedra” Durán and singer Rubén Blades. So expect a long string of brief and candid testimonies, filmed mostly in the places where the interviewees were at the time of the invasion back in 1989, which do make up a collective canvas of how folks with different viewpoints. Think of the tragedy and farce of the US operation to remove General Manuel Noriega from rule. Some people regard themselves as pro-Noriega, without acknowledging his being a dictator, as they were and are opposed to the participation and manipulation by the US in the fate of Panama — prior to the invasion. Others were and are against Noriega's corrupt dictatorship, but also were and are against the US invasion that left some many innocent people injured and dead, a catastrophe for which no exact number of victims has been established so far (of course, there's an explanation for this, which the film exposes). Invasión is not a naive picture at all, it unveils the many layers of a complex state of things that differed from the official story. An event that many would like to forget, even if they can't and won't be able to. So as the interviewees talk about, and also represent, the way things were when the US landed in Panama, you get to see individuals for whom deep emotions surface when the event is evoked. This is what matters most in a documentary that aims at apprehending the human factor. On the other hand, it's a bit too long for what it has to say, and even for how it says it. Ten or fifteen minutes less as well as fewer testimonies would have made a difference in its rythm and narrative progression. As it is, it sometimes stalls and becomes a bit repetitive. Other than that, Invasión is a fine piece that sheds light on an event that needs to be revised time and again.
“Se acabó la épica is a documentary that recovers and depicts some fragments from the life of Néstor Sánchez, as well as his literary beginnings, his journeys across Europe, his life in the US and his return to Argentina. These fragments come forward through testimonies of people who were related to his personal life and to his writings,” says documentary-maker Matilde Michanie (Judíos por elección) about her new film released yesterday. Often praised by no less than famed writer Julio Cortázar, and yet little known to general readers (and not so general too), Néstor Sánchez was born in 1935 in the neighborhood of Villa Pueyrredón in Buenos Aires and died in 2003 at the age of 68. His literature was characterized by experimental techniques, a nervous and introspective gaze on the many layers of the city where he was born, a strongly poetic and musical edge (jazz was a great influence), and a sense of ongoing discovery. Through his literature, he would pose profound existential queries, which were also part of his everyday life. For him, his personal life and his literature were indivisible, an essential whole to be examined time and again. Even with the pain caused by his psychiatric disorders, Néstor Sánchez kept writing more than anyone would have anticipated. So it’s no good news that Se acabó la épica runs into a corner at this point: its subject matter is far more interesting than its film form. Which is to say that the film is inconsequential, at best. It’s not a total mess, but sometimes it gets so flat that time seems to stand still. Of all choices, Michanie goes for some that are quite unimaginative and overused. She resorts to largely, anecdotic, and little revelatory testimonies to the camera provided by his ex wife, his son, his psychoanalysts, friends and colleagues. More often that not, said testimonies are just informative, as though you were listening to someone reading a run- of-the-mill biography. There’s also a voiceover meant to be Sánchez’s, reciting snippets from his oeuvre in a rehearsed and artificial manner. And there are several merely illustrative images of the places the writer visited in his life, which add almost nothing to the overall portrayal. As regards aesthetics, Se acabó la épica bears pretty much the same flaws found in Michanie’s previous film, Judíos por elección. That is to say, it’s scarcely cinematic: the cinematography is unexpressive, the editing fails to create an engaging rhythm (though, to be fair, the root of the problem lies in the narrative), and the music is played in a very, very formulaic manner. Perhaps the sole asset lies in unveiling many unknown slices of life and bringing to the present the figure of an almost unknown, yet gifted writer.
Hermógenes (Joaquín Furriel) is an illiterate, modest and submissive worker from the province of Santiago del Estero who comes to Buenos Aires with his wife, Gladys (Mónica Lairana), to find a job and maybe even prosper and grow. He’s soon hired by Latuada (Luis Ziembrowski), a portentous and bullying con man, to work at one of his many butcher shops. Though wary of Latuada’s irate temper, Hermógenes feels thankful for getting a job and becomes an efficient butcher in no time. He learns the customers’ first names, greets them with a smile, flatters the women, gives them the best cuts. However, he never expected to be supposed to sell almost decomposed meat, bought for little money and a sure cause of food poisoning. This way, different customers get different meat, but they all pay the same high price. For the business owner, it’s a win-win situation. Not so for his employees, who are exploited, psychologically abused and deceived by Latuada. With no education and no means, Hermógenes has nowhere to go, and so he keeps on working at the butcher shop. But things get worse and worse, and since a man can only take so much humiliation, murder is sometimes thought of as the only way out. El patrón, radiografía de un crimen, is the first fiction film by documentary filmmaker Sebastián Schindel (Mundo Alas, Rerum Novarum and El Rascacielos Latino), and is based on the book of the same title by Elías Neuman about a real-life case in Buenos Aires some thirty years back. Like the book, the movie doesn’t only tell the story about the worker turned murderer: it also exposes the tainted underworld of butcher shops, which often disguise bad meat through different illegal procedures. Well narrated, switching back and forth between past and present, Schindel’s film is not concerned with building suspense, but instead it focuses on the degradation process suffered by a worker at the hands of his employer in this story of modern slavery. In this regard, you could say it’s a fairly compelling character study as well as a portrayal of a very dark side of today’s Argentina, carefully hidden behind a smoke screen. Thanks to Schindel’s expertise as a documentary maker, this fiction film is detailed and truly realistic. Joaquín Furriel’s performance as Hermógenes is an unexpected surprise. Furriel is cast against type and really transforms into a worker from the provinces, from his looks to his personality. In fact, much of the film’s relative success has to do with Furriel’s work. Luis Ziembrowski also stands out as the mean butcher, even if he’s played this type of roles many times before. The remaining thespians, including Guillermo Pfening as Hermógenes’ lawyer, are in tune with the overall mood of the film. On the minus side, the dramatization of the end is not very compelling. Until a few scenes before, the narrative soars and maintains a sinister, menacing tone, but then it loses momentum, becomes formulaic and unnecessarily celebratory. It’s as though the ending belonged to a different film, a less nuanced one. Not because of what happens, but because of how it happens. Because the story sometimes delves into repetitive material, and the subplot about the legal system is underdeveloped, Patrón, radiografía de un crimen, misses on some great opportunities. But when it does work, which is more frequently, it’s good dramatic entertainment.
Arie Posin’s The Face of Love is the type of film that has a dubious premise to begin with: an attractive middle-aged widow falls in love with an equally attractive middle-aged man who has more than an arresting resemblance to her former husband, who died five years ago. In fact, it’s as if her late husband had an identical twin that all of a sudden came out of nowhere. At first sight, it may seem that such a premise does hold unlimited dramatic potential, and yet it really doesn’t. Considering how barely credible it is in realistic terms, I’d dare say the only genre that would make sense here would be melodrama — wilder, the better. Or a sci-fi film transpiring in a dystopian universe where by means of genetic manipulation there are already doubles for everyone (but that would be a different tale). So, a naturalistic drama like the one Posin has opted for fails to make a compelling film. Think that right after meeting his late husband’s double, the widow starts a friendly relationship with him that lasts quite some weeks — but she keeps her reasons to herself and doesn’t tell him a single thing. As time goes by, they slowly begin to fall in love. To be honest, she’s still in love with her deceased husband, so technically she’s not in falling in love again with a different person. So here’s the theme of not being able to deal with loss. And all of it handled in a shallow manner. As expected, obstacles of all sorts appear (for instance, the task of keeping him hidden from all her friends, neighbours and acquaintances is sometimes an ordeal), and in time, the romance begins to sink due to her secrecy. Still, she won’t tell the guy, even with the possibility of losing him. She keeps feeding him stupid lies. More important: how could she possibly cope with so much anxiety and emotional chaos triggered by the apparition of a man who bears the face of love? So now you may think this is actually the stuff melodrama is made of, and you’d be partly right. Yet the dialogue isn’t that melodramatic at all. It attempts to be realistic as it’s the vehicle for pseudo-existential conversations on the meaning of who you fall in love with, who the Other really is, how much you project your object of desire, what makes an individual who he is, and also why care about anything at all if the guy looks and feels just like your loved one who’s dead and buried (as if that weren’t one hell of a traumatic situation). There’s also the issue of losing your mind over the whole affair — which is actually quite interesting in itself - and yet it’s both little explored and poorly handled. As the writer/director is undecided as to what genre to utilize, he resorts to traits of drama and melodrama, and mixes them to ill- fated effect. Whenever he has a chance to go emotionally overboard, he pushes the brakes and goes for restraint. And when it all gets too serious, he switches to poor melodramatic gimmicks (there’s a terminal disease that’s only hinted at once and only has some dramatic weight at the very end, when you’ve already lost all interest in the storytelling), or goes along the lines of bad soap operas. But there’s an asset, just one: Annette Bening as the widow, and Ed Harris as the double do deliver convincing performances in spite of their unconvincing characters. Don’t expect more than that.