Eugenia

There is not much in this movie related to Bolivia's reality or history except for some political posters in the background. Eugenia is an educated thirtysomething; midway through the movie she is seen reading Simone de Beauvoir's La Femme Rompue (A Woman Destroyed) in Spanish translation. She has decided to end her marriage and move to Cochabamba, where her father lives.

Before her departure, she has a conversation with her mother, who is educated as well and is reading the novel Crítica de las Armas (a Criticism of Arms) by Argentine writer José Pablo Feinmann. Eugenia's mother is also doing some writing of her own. The conversation is conducted using "vos" for "you" instead of "tu". This form of address is used mainly in Argentina and Uruguay but also in the southeast of Bolivia.

In Cochabamba, Eugenia has to come to terms with his father's second (and much younger) wife and their son. She enrolls in culinary school and tries some odd jobs like makeup artist in a transvestite nightclub. She is offered by a very dubious indie filmmaker a lead role in a low budget movie about Tania (Tamara Bunke) who fought alongside Che Guevara during the Bolivian insurgency in 1966-1967. All the while, Eugenia tries to find a romantic connection with varying success.

The movie rests squarely on the shoulders of Andrea Camponovo, who is on screen in almost every scene. She has an easy delivery, plenty of charisma and screen presence and conveys emotions in a subtle, low key, often nonverbal way. Martin Boulocq directs fluidly. His script is at times vague and unfocused, but this is perhaps intentional given the subject of the movie. Boulocq is also in charge of the outstanding black-and-white cinematography. A movie that deserves watching.

I tried to like this.

The good: the cinematography is, the lighting really does give it that awesome black/white contrast that makes the scenes pop. Andrea's acting is kinda great, I've never seen her in anything else, but he can transmit a lot of subtle emotion with her eyes and facial expressions (she really does look like she's going through a divorce and she can't hide how miserable she is as hard as she tries to).

The bad: everything else. Black and whitenfor the sake of making a black and white movie, very well implemented but not exploded to its full potential, since most of the scenes are in dark rooms. The dialogues, for the most part, are okay, but a lot of scenes make it come out as unnatural, which even ther best actor in the movie struggle to deliver. There's a couple of good performances, but most of the actors make a very poor job and make the whole movie feel worse.

It's quite a niche movie. Some people are calling it pretentious, but it felt very honest, the creators really wanted to portrait this story in this way cause they thought ir would better convey it's message, however they lack the experience to pull ir off and some of the ideas get lost in translation. I've also seen a lot of apologist for this independent south american film, but it can be better and we have to give good criticisim to help the director, writer and actors improve.