Leonera

Leonera is a very hard film to sit through. Added to the fact that this film is strongly influenced by the French New Wave, whose films often parodies the mainstream cinema with an absolutely non- linear storytelling, we also have a harsh and ugly reality depicted in it. Seriously, watching this film was like being slapped in the face multiple times, and probably it was one of the few films which i really wanted to turn off before it's ending. But okay, i'd took the challenge and watched it entirely. But dawn, that wasn't easy. You must be thinking: 'Well, so this film is not worth watching at all'. And it really isn't. However there a couple of good things in this film.

The acting is good, though. Nothing special, but it's good. The cinematography is cool as well, but... it does not make the film any better. Again, i'm not a big fan of non linear stories, unless if they're really good and interesting. As you see, it's not the case with this film. 5.2/10

This is really powerful cinema presented by Pablo Trapero. The movie, the performances and the location will leave you breathless. This movie is not only about a mother's struggle about raising her child in a prison, but it goes much beyond it in a bold, brutal and beautiful way. The whole movie is about love, mother's love for his child, love between two human beings and the extent to which a mother will go to get her child back. Shooting the movie in a real prison and adding this to a very clever use of background prison noises creates an atmosphere which makes the whole presentation even more gripping. Usually the prison movies will depict the prisoners and the prison guards as brutal, heartless and inhuman beings, but in this movie Trapero tried to touch the softer, more humane side of the inmates and the guards. Even though I don't know Spanish , but I loved watching this movie. Martine Gusman's wonderful performance makes this movie a must see for the serious cinema lovers.

If you awoke, dazed and addled, covered in blood, with an unconscious lover near by and what appeared to be a corpse even closer--what would happen next?

It's the incarceration of the main character convincingly and powerfully plated by Martina Guzman that is the heart of the film, as she finds herself not only pregnant, but in a special ward for such victims of violence; it doesn't take long for a family of sorts of emerge among these women without hope, a strange compound of vibrant personalities tempered by the presence of children.

As her children grows up, Leonora is visited by her reptilitan ex-husband and by the mother with ulterior motives, but what I found most fascinating was the relationships that evolve in the prison with both guards and charges, and as the film develops, a strong suspenseful finish. It is an impressive and colorful story about the importance of love and places where it develops as truth.

The women in prison genre is often associated with cat-calling girl-fights and the guilty pleasure to the audience of women talking dirty and acting, actions supposed to be the purview of Tarzan aping men. Trapero's Leonera offers something else, an inquisition into how a life behind bars can change the human psyche and create a bond between a child and a mother. Echoing the early movies of the French New Wave that placed the gyneco-issues front and center and the point of view objectivity of the Dardenne Brothers, it is a worthy addition to what can be called the post-modern woman's picture. What is it like to give birth to your child behind bars? To have your child taken away, the rejoinder and enjoinder are all explored. With a wonderful performance by Martina Gusman, it is another worthy canon to 21st Century Argentine cinema.

70 years of movie going and with seeing 'Lion's Den' I've experienced the most remarkable film of my life. The writers delivered a great story which then had life breathed into it by sensitized actors, both writers and actors efforts directed with enormous creative humanity by Pablo Trabero. I saw no artifice and after watching some of the movie allowed myself a mili-second of time to think of 'Lion's Den' as being a documentary before forgetting any of that and just became an involved, rapt viewer. Deeply touching. Deeply human. This review does not contain enough lines - the minimum length for reviews is 10 lines of text. There!