El Bonaerense - Pablo Trapero (2002)

Carancho is about love in the middle of road accidents. An ugly world full of people who want to help others and people who want to take advantage of others. The world is a dark place but sometimes there is the light of love trying to save us. 

El Bonaerense is about corruption in the middle of the police force. A relatively young man from a small town ends up as a cadet. He got there by chance and had no better prospects. He is a man of his time, the end of 2001, when the country was both confused and demoralised. But he's also an excuse and a mirror for us spectators to travel into the world of La Bonaerense (Buenos Aires province's police force). For people who are familiar with it, it's no surprise the corruption and behaviour of people who should be instead be fighting crime. I'm not sure how it works for people who aren't familiar... I would say this film is too much, it can't be like this, this director is exaggerating. No, he isn't. That's how things are.

Trapero's vision of things is bleak, but the characters of both of his films belong to the same world. El Bonaerense is weaker in the story aspect, maybe because the characters aren't strong enough. It's still an alright film, a journey into corruption. It's nice to watch. The use of music annoys me a little, too stereotyped, too easy choices... exactly the same with the characters.

El Bonaerense

Carancho - Pablo Trapero (2010)

I like this film. I like it because it makes me think that Argentinian cinema can indeed create good things. I like the way it's filmed, the camera and the photography... the sound is alright too.

Not long before Carancho was released, El secreto de sus ojos was a huge hit, Oscar included. A film about a troubled policeman, haunted by an old love at the same time that someone dies and he has a new case to investigate. The story develops into the old love affair (rather boring too) and ends up forgetting about the girl who died in the hands of a psychopath. But it doesn't matter, because her husband is taken care of it by finding the killer himself and torturing him to the end of their days. I remember having trouble putting into words why I hated the film... until someone commented he hated it because of how it's acceptable to take hand in their own justice. That was it, mixing things, trying to make a film about justice and love and failing to do both. (Someone else I know thinks that the film is also saying is that there is no point in fighting lost causes, which is very discouraging). 

Carancho has a troubled character too, in this case a thieving lawyer. And he falls in love, so badly that he decides to finally start doing things right and improve his life. He has feelings, he is human. She is a doctor hooked on drugs. They are a couple that work in the same rotten world where life is at the edge, always. But they are right for each other. It is clearly a film about love. The context is bleak and their story might be hopeless but they are real people with real feelings, with actual difficulties to live their lives. Life has more meaning in this film. So does love. The ending might have a little too many twists, but you can't say it doesn't make sense. It's well written. Even though they share the main actor, it is a world apart from El secreto de sus ojos and a much better film.

Carancho

La Ciénaga - Lucrecia Martel (2001)

There are films that everyone talks about, everyone praise and nobody can really express why. This is one of those films. For the same reasons you're scared of watching them. Over ten years after it was released and unanimously acclaimed, I managed to see The Swamp.

First thing was to try and be objective and not hate it just because. And I did. I didn't adored the film, I think it was okay. I tried to understand what it meant at the time. It probably has a different rhythm and structure than most of the films at their time. It's very much a film about the North West of Argentina, rather than capital city based stories. That's the main innovation. It's about a bourgeois family, the relationships between them and with the people around them. But nothing happens. I always talk about engaging characters and empathy. These are empty characters, you just observe them, almost in a voyeuristic way. With pity or maybe despising them a little. You don't feel anything. There's no human drama.  Just everyday life. Even more boring than real life. Naturalism without emotion.

Painting a social environment that you don't normally see in films was a good achievement. But the best thing about La Ciénaga is the use of sound. Argentinian cinema doesn't have a tradition of good use of sound. Moreover, it has a "bad sound" reputation that almost turned into a cliché. Since this film I can see there have been changes and you can see sound is going somewhere and it is important now. My theory is that the most important change was done by emerging directors who were now trained at film school and were more aware that sound was also a narrative element of film (yes, films being audiovisual never gave previous directors a hint before)

What's so innovative about the sound? It also paints the picture. You don't have to make an effort to listen to what the actors are saying. You can feel the atmosphere through sound too (a film like this without the sounds of an approaching storm or the strong presence of nature wouldn't be right). The awkwardness of situations is even more awkward because of the way sound is used. Nothing outstanding or significantly more expensive, just a little bit of extra work and respect for the sound department. At the time this was a huge improvement.

La ciénaga