Celia (Betiana Blum) is a spinster in her late sixties who hasn’t lost all hopes of getting married, even if she doesn’t acknowledge it. Her sister, Aída (Lucrecia Capello), is a few years older and a widow with a daughter and a granddaughter living in Canada. Both sisters live together in an ordinary apartment in an equally ordinary building where everybody knows everybody — and some pry shamelessly into the lives of others.
Aída’s daughter, Marita, is about to take them to live in Canada and care for them in these last years of their lives, so it’s time for goodbyes. But a few incidents along the way will change the predetermined plans for good. Perhaps there’s yet love to be found where you least expect it.
There are a handful of other colourful supporting characters in Las chicas del 3º, the new film by Argentine filmmaker Maximiliano Pelosi (Otro entre otros, Una familia gay), including a janitor with a penchant for gaming, a broken-hearted young housewife with a despicable husband, a new male gay couple into mild S&M, a good-looking brunette who does tricks for money, a hot young man and his sister, and a Bulgarian night nurse.
For the most part, Las chicas del 3º is a situation comedy that covers overworked territory in a formulaic, uncreative manner. In essence, there’s little here that you haven’t seen before in diverse films depicting the vicissitudes and oddities of living in your average neighbourly building. As was to be expected, the two sisters like gossiping, prying, approving or disapproving of what others do. And the others are, above all, stereotypes rather than fleshed-out characters. For that matter, so are the two sisters, but they are somewhat more developed.
The problem is not that they are stereotypes, since that’s a valid option for the genre, but that they are very thin, unremarkable stereotypes who neither go over the top nor strike a funny low key. They just lie in an insipid middle ground that fails to be gripping. Even the overall narrative structure has more to do with loosely connected dated television skits than with smartly intertwined cinematic gags.
On the plus side, the professional performances of Betiana Blum and Lucrecia Capello are kind of engaging in their own terms. Both actresses have the right timing and know-how to make the most out of each comic situation, and so they effortlessly keep the film going. To a lesser extent, Manuel Vicente also does a good job. Other than that, there’s nothing much to write home about.
Production notes
Las chicas del 3º – un consorcio feliz (Argentina, 2014). Directed by Maximiliano Pelosi. With Betiana Blum, Lucrecia Capello, Manuel Vicente, Ingrid Grudke, Juana Repetto, Carlos Kaspar, Mosquito Sancineto, Emilia “Picky” Paino, Bernarda Pagés, Luciano Linardi. Written by Diego A. Fleischer, Marcelo Burello and Maximiliano Pelosi. Cinematography: Matías Carneiro. Editing: Damián Tetelbaum. Running time: 83 minutes.
