Amorosa Soledad

I generally prefer watching Latin American movies and not Hollywood hits, because occasionally, I have seen unrecognized masterpieces, and in most cases the viewer gets in touch with interesting characters, situations and feelings. Unfortunately, this was not the case with "Amorosa Soledad". It is a boring movie, forcing us to spend all time watching uninteresting details of the daily life of a neurotic, hypochondriac girl named Soledad. It seems that during the first half an hour or so, the most interesting event of the story, is the blocking of the toilet, which leads Soledad to use the bidet instead of asking a plumber to fix it. The hypochondriac visits continuously the hospital complaining for various psychosomatic symptoms and byes a digital device for blood pressure measurement, in order to monitor it continuously. We learn that she just separated from her boyfriend (lucky guy) and decided to avoid any further relations for several years at least. However, her decision is not so steady and she falls after a couple of days for the first man who meets in a fast food restaurant. We wonder about her decision to break up her promise of abstinence, because the new fellow is a shorty guy, with uninteresting face and a huge head, bearing a continuous smile and trying, quite unsuccessfully though, to look sympathetic and friendly. However the love plot is nonexistent, and we get through a new series of uninteresting details of Soledad's life, e.g. we have to spend some minutes watching the doorkeeper to unzip the dress of the protagonist, because the zip was stuck (or was it an ingenious hint of the director on the loneliness of Soledad's character?). After an hour or so, it seems that the story reaches its climax, because the new boyfriend obtains to fix the toilet, a fact which initially causes distress to Soledad (may be she got used to the bidet). However, a few more events are to come and finally she moves to the house of the shining-with-joy new boyfriend, but begins to cry. This is kind of surprise, because all of a sudden, the complex, multi-layered character and personality of Soledad is revealed to all of us, the naive spectators, and the director and writer of this "masterpiece" triumph. Unfortunately, we are not clever enough to understand the deeper meaning of this movie, and we just feel deep sorrow for the 80 minutes of our life spent watching this rubbish.

A refreshing twist on the old "dumped character rises above depression and starts learning valuable life lessons, then finally finds love again, only this time real and mature" tale. This small gem of a movie starts in that direction, then gradually starts steering away from cliché.

The movie's biggest accomplishment is the title character's depiction: like in real life, neurosis and melancholy are seldom neat or cute, and watching Soledad's evolution has the strange allure of a train wreck in slo-mo, with the added bonus of hilarity and eerieness at regular intervals.

Inés Efron doesn't stray from her (self-imposed?) typecast persona, yet delivers a powerful performance. Fabián Vena is comfortable in his shoes and brings soul and spark to his Nico. The magnificent Ricardo Darín dazzles with his simplicity and depth.

In short, another example of why Argentine cinema is alive and kicking, and that there is a happy medium between the revolting crass commercialism of Francella or Dibu and the tedious condescending pretentiousness of Lucrecia Martel or Adolfo Aristarain.

When I watched 'The Secret in Their Eyes', I guess that was my first Argentinian movie and from that one I started liking Ricardo Darin very much. He is very powerful actor with great voice, facial expression and body language. I came to this title only because his name and after I'm done with the movie, I am truly disappointed. From first 10-20 min, I understood RD has hardly any cameo appearance in this movie. May be I was expecting another Amelie.

I watched the movie completely. Not because the movie was good or anything, just because it's a short one (I could have edited it 30-40 minutes less) and camera work was good. The lead actress is also good. Everything else sucks. You'll hardly ever feel for the characters. May be the directors tried to capture a snapshot of life, but without any concrete story and some incomplete side characters without any reason or significance, its very hard to get anything out of it.

They say, its a rom-com. I got little bit rom, though it was not believable. Com is virtually non-existent, there is no witty dialogue, no comic relief/scene.

This one is NOT a very good movie, but somehow you can drag it to the end I guess.