Campanella

Partly motivated by my recent trip to Argentina (on which I should write something at some point), in the last months we have seen a lot of Argentinian films. Following Wikipedia, I have tried to identify a number of "classic" films, from the mid 90s to nowadays. This is not very difficult if you follow two names: Ricardo Darín (actor) and Juan José Campanella (director).

Campanella, 53-year old, got quite a bit of worldwide recognition in 2010, when he won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film with El Secreto de sus Ojos (The Secret in Their Eyes, 2009), in which Darín and Soledad Villamil have the starring roles. Wikipedia describes the film in an accurate way: "it tells the story of a rape and murder case that has an enduring, decades-long effect on the people closest to it: the investigators, the victim's husband, and the killer." Back then, Campanella was already a renowned director in Argentina/South America as he had make a number of successful and interesting films.

I think we saw most of them.

El Hijo de la Novia (Son of the Bride, 2001) is the story of a 42-year-old divorced restauranteur (again played by Darín) who has a very difficult relationship with his mother (who suffers Alzheimer's disease), his father, daughter, and friends. El mismo amor, la misma lluvia (Same Love, Same Rain, 1999) is the story of a love affair which covers the most dramatic years of the recent Argentine history, namely the late 70s --in which the latest military dictatorship was on power-- to the 80s and early 90s, with the tough return to fragile democracy. Finally, Luna de Avellaneda (Moon of Avellaneda, 2004) tells the story of a guy who tries to save from failure the social club of his neighborhood, in which he was born (and located in Avellaneda, a district of Buenos Aires). At the same time, he needs to deal with his failed marriage, the distance from his children, and the whole economic situation.

Not all films are equally great (above I described them in descending order of greatness), but without a doubt they are far better than any regular Hollywood film. There are several remarkable aspects in Campanella's films. For instance, characters are typically very well written, and stories combine rather well elements of comedy, drama, and tension. But there are two aspects in which I would like to comment on. First, by watching his films you understand (and recognize) quite a bit about the recent political history in Argentina. But this is always told in a balanced and subtle way: a given political moment is not described directly but shown in the way it affected the character's lives. This is especially evident in El Secreto de sus Ojos and El mismo amor, la misma lluvia, in which the story unfolds along several decades, and so it is unavoidable to abstract away from the current political context. In the former, the repression caused by the dictatorship has a central role in the story but this is portrayed in an implicit way.

The second amazing aspect is that none of the films has a happy ending. In fact, in all of them there is an important line of the story which ends up far from happily. I like this quite a lot, as the simplest thing in a film, I believe, is to come up with a quick, defining event that saves the characters. This is a form of realism that should appear more often in films, as life is not plain happy nor plain sad and difficult... it's just life and films should portray it as such.