Das letzte Kino der Welt

This is one of the greatest movies I´ve ever seen. If you like cinema, you´ll like it as much I did. It´s funny, but it´s also touching. It´s a movie about people who see movies, but essencially a film about people... and movies.

a taxista in buenos aires one day gets bored with her life there and heads south in her taxi with no particular destination in mind other than keep heading to the extreme south of patagonia. so begins the film. the windswept plains and rolling hills, bleak and deserted create an atmosphere of delicious melancholia. she ends up the village at the end of the world, where the only contact people have with the outside world is via cinema -- a man on a motorbike comes there every couple weeks with a film whose 16 mm reels are all mixed up. the entire village gathers in the cinema in the plaza every evening to watch the film in a different order each night, and over time, most of the characters have become a bit eccentric as well. much of the film is about the lives of the people in the village. one day some trucks arrive and put up a TV tower. Henceforth the once bustling plaza, center of activity and coherence in the village is now empty, with the glow of TV in every window.. and maria soledad, the taxista decides its time for her to move on somewhere else.. a classic exposition of the argentine melancholy temperament. i wish i could buy the DVD somewhere.

Rio Pico is a little town, not far away from Buenos Aires, but nothing really happens over there and the population is in no way ahead of the modern things in the world. When Soledad (Vera Fogwill), a female taxi driver from Buenos Aires, got stuck in the town by a car accident, things are changing. It was never the goal from Soledad to stay in the village but she got embraced by the inhabitants who are asking her to be the presenter of the local film journal which is shown in the local filmtheatre. The filmtheatre is the sole way the people have to escape from reality, even if all film copies are the ones who are rejected by the bigger Argentinian cities. "El viento se llevo lo que" (be translated as "Gone with the wind") is a hilarious top comedy that only got spoiled by the entrance of French actor Edgard Wexley (played by the overrated Jean Rochefort)who is the local film hero. Apart from that is "El viento se llevo lo que" a wonderful piece of world cinema in where director Alejandro Agresti (already a filmmaker in Argentinia since 1978) seeks a satisfying balance between hilarity and the hard truth. A South-American pearl that is recommended to anyone who loves world cinema.

A very clever movie, with loads of references to nouvelle vague stuff. This film lets you wonder about the effects of cinema on society, as the villagers turn into their filmheroes, but since they are edited backwards, upside down and in the wrong order, the imitated heroes become quite hillarious. Some of the characters are very interesting, especially the local film critic. Agresti hates critics, and this can be found in the interaction between the critic and the B-actor/hero, a tragic drunkard, who visits the village one day. Loads of sub-themes make this movie very lively, although some of them are not that interesting. The criticism of the argentine dictature and the introduction of television are not that great.

All goes wrong however when the infamous actor actually enters the village. One of the important points in the movie is the complete isolation of the Patgonian village, but since the actor arrives by train this fantastic concept falls totally apart. Worth a try though, or, in the spirit of the film: try a worth.

The film is about Soledad a cab driver that get tired to drive in Buenos Aires and decided to get out of the city and end on small town who is completely isolated from the rest of the country. The only contact with the reality outside the town are the movies and these are old and mixed. There are really strange characters on the movie. It's really worth to watch it.