Rojo

Summer movie season has arrived in NYC. I can always tell by the higher quality of the foreign films that come to town (you can bet none of the Hollywood films are of high quality). "Rojo" is the best film I've seen since at least the winter and I can't remember which one that was. This one features good acting and camera work and with some thought-provoking allegory and symbolism.

Nutshell: An influential lawyer is slowly losing his ethical footing after a confrontation with an unbalanced patron at a restaurant, leading to a visit from an amateur detective investigating the disappearance of the patron. Give it a chance, because it is slow to get underway. But if you appreciate superior filmmaking there is always a reward with a good motion picture, and this is one example.

******** 8/10 - Website no longer prints my star rating.

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.

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 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.

This is not an easy movie to describe. And I think some historians have even more to say about the time this is playing (adding to the flavor of the country and the political backdrop). So there is a lot of baggage from the start, which some may be more aware than others. But even if you begin from zero, you can take a lot from this movie.

To do that, you have to be aware that the movie itself is not meant to excite you every other minute. Some may call it mundane, slow and even boring. Now that is valid depending on what your taste is like. So try not to judge someone who has the complete opposite opinion on this (or any other movie for that matter) than you. Overall I do think that the way this is shot and how it is played (excellent) made me go for the rating I chose. Again, it will not tickle everyone ... but those that will be intrigued by the characters and maybe the period and place it is playing, with everything that was going on back then ... they'll have fun - or the equivalent of it.