Ay Juancito

I just saw ¡Ay Juancito!. A friend highly recommended it and I found it at a Blockbuster store here in Buenos Aires. Excellent! The pacing of the movie is very smooth, the actors are good, Adrián Navarro as Juan Duarte -the 'Hero' of the movie- Laura Novoa as Evita Perón, Leticia Brédice as Yvonne Pascal (Not the name of the real actress in this true story) and all the others in the cast. An amazing achievement of the casting was that of Alejandra Majluf as Niní Marshall, since she looks almost exactly like her! The recreation of the period -about 1950- was very good, even the colors looked like those of the old Technicolor.

The wardrobe was designed by Horace Lane, who actually designed clothes for Evita, so the accuracy of the women dresses is flawless. So were the make up and hair styles. The interiors were recreated quite lavishly and accurately. And we must consider that a great deal of ingenuity must have been used, since Argentinian movies are made with budgets that will only cover few minutes of shooting an American movie!

There are a couple of scenes that are intensely moving, one is when Evita is forced to renounce to the vice presidency of the country due to her gender (The excuse given to the people at the time was another) and to the threat that she represented to the military, the church and the oligarchy of the country.

The other scene is (I don't consider the following *A SPOILER* since this movie is not fiction and everybody knows contemporary history) the one of her death. Wow! with a minimum fuss this actress accomplished a very delicate and subtle ending of a very painful agony. The more I think about this movie, the more impressed I am with it. I'll check Héctor Olivera's work (The Director) to see the rest of his production.

Gee, I don't know... why do I not like this movie? There are so many reasons, and none of them is good enough to hate the movie but the sum of them is quite disappointing.

First of all, the main actor is just awful. I haven't seen him in any other movie and, judging by this one, I won't see him again. Why he was chosen, I cannot imagine. Leticia Brédice is not that great either, but that does not surprise me anymore. Anyway, her character is not very good. The story is not amazing, ends abruptly and has no suspense, which is the biggest disappointment, being Juan Duarte's story so surrounded by mystery. Furthermore, there are some moments in which it seems just an excuse to make some remarks against Perón, Eva Perón and their government (I don't know if that's the case, but that's what I felt, even though I'm not a Perón supporter).

And most important of all: if you haven't spent enough money in your fake head, if you have a sorry plaster fake head that couldn't look human even among apes, you must NOT do a close shot of it!!! (sorry but it's true)

Well, now the good part, the part that made me give it a 5 and no less: even when I'm not old enough to have lived that times, I got the feeling that the setting was very good. Inés Estévez was absolutely great, a true diva. And Norma Aleandro was amazing as always. Alejandra Majluf, whom I never saw acting before, was quite good, I don't think she is an extraordinary actress, but somehow her part suited her perfectly, the resemblance is impressive. Marrale and Novoa had their moments. Their lines (especially her lines) are not great and their start is quite shaky, but they're fine. Nevertheless, none of them is good enough to save the movie.

Ay, Olivera, it could have been so much better...