Rojo

This film take me by surprise, original and captivating. Usually I read something about the film before heading to the cinema but in this case I saw the trailer and read the quickly description. I'm mentioning this because affects yours/my mood and expectatives about the film, before even seeing the film, and your opinion of it. This films plays with different styles and the narrative is a metaphorical one. The beginning of the film set the pace and there is some humour there when you least expected. However all this funny bit and pieces that I enjoyed are related to the fact that I speak spanish, and the rhythm of the conversations, the tone of how things are said, can lead to laugh and enjoy the absurd moment or see it as a truly dramatic one. There is a another layer that talk about how we "slowly get used to" corruption and crime as far as we don't get our benefits taken away and our placid lives interrupted... too much. If you wanna see a film about a crime and a mystery, this film may disappoint you... if you go with a good open mood, you may have a great time!

I saw this at MOMA this past January and as I see it is up on video now I thought I'd summarize. The period in question is the nasty Isabel Peron dictatorship and the equally nasty dictatorship that replaced it. Disappearing people had been occurring in Latin America for hundreds of years and this period was no different. That is one of the underlying themes, and one of the few scenes that worked is a scene of local people going to a home and emptying it of anything of any value. It reminded me of a scene in Kazantzakis' Zorba where the moment the ageing widow dies, all of the town turns up to calmly steal everything not nailed down. The film also has some brief moments of great cinematography. It also is clearly influenced by Fargo, True Detective and some aspects of Scandinavian noir, although wihtout the depth, dark humor, or coherence.

Ultimately though. Rojo. is entirely incoherent. it not only fails to tell a meaningful story, it fails to tell an intelligible one. it is a tedious experience to watch it, with no reward at all for the audience.

It is a film with a beginning that captivates you and that allows you to remain attentive to the rest of the film even when after the beginning it seems that some scenes are not related, however, as it gets closer to the end, the relationship of everything is understood. Personally, it was difficult for me to understand right away what the objective of placing it in 1975 was, but then I understood that the message of everything was the following: the violence of the dictatorship that had been experienced since 1976 in Argentina was internalized in the Argentine people. Since before the dictatorship itself and the same citizens reproduced it, especially the middle class. Whoever wants to see this film should take this detail into account before seeing it.

A bad, boring film which wastes the talent of Grandinetti. Make better use of your time by watching another film . This is total nonsense and includes a very gratuitous and grotesque scene where a bull is castrated, which is not in any way essential to the film's plot. Also included is a scene where a record with an A&M label plays on a record player while Camilo Sesto's Quieres Ser Mi Amante is heard. Camilo Sesto's music was never released on A&M. He recorded for Ariola, which later became part of the BMG conglomerate. A&M Records was an American record label that had absolutely no connection with Ariola or BMG, and is now part of the Universal Music Group. Por favor!

It's a pretty well-acted movie with a good period context and pretty good photography. But the script is empty, very empty. The end comes to nothing and everything that happens during the movie ends in nothing. This is not good Argentine cinema, it is one of the weakest films I have seen.