It was destiny. I was getting ready to write at length about a badly made film produced in Habana, when it came to my hands two of the most praised films in the most recent Latin American cinema, both produced in Argentina (in co production with Spain) and both of them acclaimed by the public and venerated by the international critic. This encounter –since they were released- with Adolph Aristaraín’s Martín Hache (1997), and Juan Jose Campanella’s El Hijo de la Novia (nominated in 2001 for the best Foreign Language Film) changed my initial intentions so I started to feel like writing about films that leave an indelible print in our hearts, and that raise over the rest thanks to the narrative gentleness of their author; the characters brought to life by splendid actors; the scripts, deep and real. But above all, these films are a gift to the spectator who, for about two hours, becomes the witness of such stories that tell us, intelligently, about human feelings and emotions, without making use of great technical acrobatics, special effects, or a great deal of gratuitous violence.

These two cinematographic productions fit perfectly within this patron.  Both films were made by directors who have suffered exile. In the case of Aristaraín, he suffered the coercion of an autocratic militarised government in Argentina.  Campanella had to leave his beloved country not to see monumental economic, human and social landslide.  In those dark years, when military dictatorships were present in all the Latin American territory, the totalitarian censorship exerted upon artists, journalists, teachers and intellectuals, and the denial of fundamental rights to the civil population untied an unsustainable situation. Only a minority could escape.  The internal conflict is magnified from outside the country, solutions do not come, and you start to feel deceit and a sense of hopelessness when you look at the country that saw you being born.

Both films are created in the context of the distressing socio-political situation of Latin America. This is a big continent full of resources, which has been devastated and looted all through its history by colonisers and armed forces (some called to be official and some other terrorist) to the point that not much has been left for this continent to get over. And this is the psychological and political frame in which the main characters of both films are placed: Federico Luppi, in the role of Martin Echenique, talks with rage and disillusion about an old expatriate man; meanwhile Ricardo Darin, in the role of the owner of Belvedere Restaurant, hides himself not to succumb to the most recent crisis in Argentina.

Sitting down to a table in a restaurant of Madrid, Martin father and son (Luppi and Juan Diego Botto) discuss about life in Argentina, yet this conversation could be held by two Colombians, Peruvians, Panamanians or any two people from the vast territory comprehended between Rio Grande and Tierra del Fuego. 

“Cuando uno tiene la chance de irse de Argentina la tiene que aprovechar, es un país donde no se puede ni se debe vivir, te haces mierda, si te lo tomás en serio, si pensás que podes hacer algo para cambiarlo, te hacés mierda. Es un país sin futuro, saqueado, depredado y no va a cambiar, los que se quedan con el botín no van a permitir que cambie. Argentina es una trampa (...) te hacen creer que puede cambiar, lo sentís cerca, ves que es posible, que no es una utopía (...) y siempre te cagan, vienen los milicos y matan a 30 mil tipos, o viene la democracia y las cuentas no cierran y otra vez a aguantar y a cagarse de hambre, y lo único en lo que podés pensar es en tratar de sobrevivir o de no perder lo que tenés; el que no se muere se traiciona y se hace mierda, y encima te dicen que somos todos culpables...”

In a similar situation, but in a restaurant of Buenos Aires, Rafael Belvedere (Darin) expresses with nervousness his low opinion of the crisis that his country is undergoing, when he is trying to keep his parents’ restaurant at the insistence of a multinational on buying it from him.

“¿Cuándo no hubo crisis acá? Quiero decir, si no hay inflación hay recesión, si no hay recesión hay inflación, si no es el Fondo Monetario es el Frente Popular, la cuestión es que si no es en el frente, es en el fondo, pero siempre una mancha de humedad en esta casa hay.”

Although none of the two films is a political manifesto, it is evident that their creators speak through the personages. It appears, then, the urgent necessity to think about certain matters so vital to us, although we run the risk to fail to succeed in our enterprise. 

However, you might be wondering what the connexion is between the situation of Argentina and the later development of the plot and the personages of these powerful stories.  Then, to my modest understanding, the protagonists of both films are presented to us in very different personal contexts but doubtlessly marked by their decisions towards their country, that is, leaving it or holding it there stoically.

Martín is an unsociable, odd and intolerant man, a mature film director who doubts his own capacity to direct films. He has been living in Spain for several years. His decision to leave Argentina separated him from his family, especially from his son, Hache, who Martín is almost forced to live with again due to Hache’s bad experience with drugs, which almost killed him. Yet he is just a confused teenager who does not find his place in life. In addition, Martín maintains a loving relationship with the pretty young Argentine Alicia -magnificently performed by Cecilia Roth- in which Martin’s better friend, Dante – brilliantly performed by Eusebio Poncela -, sees an unquestionable “nostalgia tanguera”.

There the plot begins to flow.  First he flees from the country leaving his son there. Years later he must retake his paternal roll. This situation is the trigger for a chain of fascinating conversations, reflections, fights and debates about life, love, work, money, sex and drugs, among other matters, by the four main characters of the story.

Dante, being an epicurean soul as he is, has the freest mind of them all and thus, the most ingenious arguments such as “making love to the minds and not to the bodies”; or his shattering improvised monologue accusing his audience at the theatre of being but a group of hypocrites because they can go to bed with their conscience clear, proud of having applauded a leftist play of a highly critical nature, when at the end of the day, they support with their work and their habits a system that is swallowing up the whole world with increasing voracity. This is an appropriate example of a Poetic Act, which Alejandro Jodorowski –a well recognised filmmaker, among other occupations- mentions in his book La Danza de la Realidad (The Dance of Reality), and which consists of one or more crazy non-conventional elements introduced by the poet in order to urge a change in the structure of society, at least within his/her audience.

Going back to the situation in Argentina and its connexion to the films’ plot we have, on the other side, Rafael Belvedere. At the very beginning of the film El Hijo de la Novia (The Son of the Bride) he appears running here and there, neurotic and overloaded, stuck to his mobile, arguing with his suppliers, facing his employees, wanting to settle his accounts. In other words, he is trying to get on with his business, which is threatened to come to grief due to the delicate economic situation in Argentina. In such circumstances, Rafael does not have the time to spend with his daughter, his girlfriend, and even less to go to the geriatric to visit his mother who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease. Until one day he has a heart attack and fifteen days in hospital open his eyes.

Then he decides to sell the restaurant, recover his girlfriend’s love, spend more time with his daughter to know her better, and the most important thing: to help his father –tenderly performed by Hector Alterio- to make true his dream of getting married in church to his beloved Norma Aleandro. The incredibly sensitive performance of this couple -the most acclaimed of Argentinean actors- provides the final scene of the marriage with a special emotiveness. Once the ceremony has been completed, as they walk back the church corridor, the presents cry with emotion as they are assisting one of the biggest tokens of love that a man, still in love with his wife after 50 years of marriage, is capable of. He wishes to give her such a longed-for moment although it is uncertain that she will understand or remember it due to her illness. 

Some say that it is impossible to reach absolute happiness. I’d rather hold on to the popular conception of happiness as a sate of the soul, fed by all the moments of pleasure that we experience through our lives. Among these moments there are the books that dazzled us, the songs that excited us and, definitely, the films we fell in love with. As the Uruguayan master of poetry Eduardo Galeano said: Recordar (to remember) – from Latin re-cordis- means “to return to the heart” (cordis). Here is my modest tribute to two great jewels of Latin American cinema. Because watching them again I remembered, with enormous pleasure, I “returned”.  

Translated by Maria Barbado