Rojo

Yesterday evening, I took advantage of a French premiere within UGC Les Halles, in Paris, in the presence of the Argentine director Benjamín Naishtat who fluently spoke French with an almost-irreproachable accent. He confided us he was inspired by the detective movies (« polar » in French) of the 70's.

The film generally seems to be the mixture of two films from two distinct directors. The duels (all those involving Darío Grandinetti and / or Alfredo Castro) highlight an obvious cinematographic maturity based on an irreproachable photography and well-built dialogues. These scenes remind me of the excellent film El Clan (2015) which takes place a few years later, at the beginning of the 80's. Conversely, others scenes such as the rehearsal of the dance show are almost annoying and weirdly seem to come from another movie and from another director.

In summary, I'm rather disappointed with this slightly-muddleheaded movie, despite some excellent scenes. I'm nevertheless convinced that the next movie realized by Benjamín Naishtat will be better built. 4/5 of 10.

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!

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 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.

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.