Within the current Argentine cinema production, documentaries have been taking centre stage for quite some time. And it’s easy to see why: the budgets are usually lower than those of fiction films, they can be filmed in less time and with a smaller crew, they don’t demand that much preproduction, don’t need actors, and allow for a degree of improvisation. In a sense, you don’t have to be a consummate filmmaker to make a somewhat decent documentary. As long as you know the basics, you should be fine.
That’s why you’d think there should be a fair number of good ones. The truth is you couldn’t be more wrong. The bad news is that, because of the accessibility of documentaries, too many filmmakers seem to believe they can get away with making them with little effort. Even worse, without caring for a truly cinematic approach (be it conventional or avant-garde).
Córtenla, una película sobre call centres, by Ale Cohen, which deals with the daily exploitation endured by telemarketers from different kinds of call centres. And there you have the first huge problem: unless you live in a parallel universe, you surely know capitalism exploits its workers. I gather you also know call centres are dreadful work places: long hours, little money, an insane amount of work, and plenty of unfulfilled promises of promotions and bonuses. Let alone the pressure to make money all the time. And that the unions betray their workers shouldn’t be a surprise either.
So Ale Cohen’s feature does nothing but spell out what you already knew. And in a bad way: it arbitrarily mixes fictional reenactments (horrendous performances), with clips from real business meetings (predictably moronic), unexpected and uninventive animation, and redundant testimonies from telemarketers from different companies who pretend they are taking to one another over the phone (yes, a string of talking heads). Moreover, the cinematography, editing, sound design and production design couldn’t be any less inspired. Rather than cinema, Córtenla, una película sobre call centres feels like a mediocre TV show.
It comes as a paradox that you are expected to side up with the workers, which you’d normally do considering how unfair and unlawful the scenario is, and yet Cohen’s film is so lame that you can’t side up with anything at all.
