Ana Katz’s refreshing film strikes a perfect balance between laughter and angst
Life isn’t easy for young, first-time mothers with newborn babies. Ask Liz (Julieta Zylberberg), she should know. Every day she takes her baby Nicanor in the stroller for a walk around the park. And she’s pretty much all by herself since her husband, Gustavo (Daniel Hendler) travels a lot because of work. In fact, he’s now in Chile filming a volcano — of all things! So Liz and Gustavo only communicate via Skype, whenever possible. To top it all off, Liz needs someone to help her with the house chores, and finding the right person is no easy task.
On an ordinary afternoon, Liz meets Rosa (Ana Katz) and baby Clarissa at the park. She also a meets a group of moms with their kids, but for some reason she befriends Rosa and Clarissa, not the other moms. Perhaps because Rosa appears to be as lonely and helpless as she is, while all the other moms cheerfully celebrate the joys of motherhood. So it’s no surprise that Rosa and Clarissa soon become a growing presence in Liz’s life.
But as comforting as having a new friend is, there’s also something odd about Rosa. Perhaps it’s her insistence to be with Liz all the times, or her nosy attitude, or that she is in need of money, or most likely that she wants Liz to take her, Clarissa and her sister Renata to a small town in the province of Buenos Aires so that Renata can meet in person a guy she’s met online. Of course, it’s Liz the one who has to do the driving with her own car. Now Liz feels she wants out of this friendship. And she feels a bit scared too.
Mi amiga del parque (My Friend from the Park), the new film by Ana Katz (El juego de la silla, Una novia errante, Los Marziano) is more than a refreshing surprise within the many plainly average, or below average, local films released this year. Unlike them, Katz’s new feature has a distinctive personality: it features characters that are initially built upon stereotypes only to be soon fleshed out with unpredictable nuances. It boasts a contagious, perfectly calibrated sense of humour, it works well both in the spoken text and the disguised subtext, and it’s filled with gripping performances from the entire cast — including that of Ana Katz herself.
That alone is a significant achievement, but Mi amiga del parque goes quite a few extra miles. It examines the joys and hardships of motherhood in both a comic and a dramatic key, while also addressing loneliness and hopelessness in a world without men in an apparent nonchalant manner. Katz strikes a perfect balance between what makes you laugh and what anguishes you, which is a very hard thing to do. Subtly understated at times and amusingly over the top at other times, this is the kind of work that comes out of good scriptwriting and a very assured direction.
It very confidently works within the realm of the absurd, but not because what happens is absurd in itself but rather because of how Katz depicts it. It’s the how what matters, not the what. In this regard, you could say that the sardonic edge is reminiscent of the oeuvre of Martín Rejtman, no less than one of Argentina’s best filmmakers and the spiritual father of the so-called New Argentina cinema.
But we are not talking about copycat filmmaking, but rather that both Katz and Rejtman share a same sensibility to start with. Then each one follows a very different path, but sometimes their characters seem to inhabit the same small odd world. Which in this case is to be celebrated.
Production notes
Mi amiga del parque (Argentina, 2014). Directed by Ana Katz. Written by Ana Katz and Inés Bortagaray. With Julieta Zylberberg, Ana Katz, Maricel Álvarez, Mirella Pascual, Malena Figó, Daniel Hendler. Cinematography: Bill Nieto. Editing: Andres Tambornino. Running time: 84 minutes.
