Voyage en famille

Pablo Trapero, one of the most recognized directors of the new Argentine cinema, has done three movies: "Mundo Grúa", which I haven't seen and seems to be the best; "El Bonaerense", a tale about a man who becomes a cop; and "Familia Rodante", which is not more than what it proposes.

His second film was characterized by focusing thoroughly in Buenos Aires' reality and the reality of the persons that try to survive there. This is repeated in "Familia Rodante", but with a family, that travels. It's a trip to Misiones, well-known Argentine province; and it is a trip because of a wedding. I don't want to think about the fact of making a two-day trip to come back after some hours and travel for two more days...And there are many members.

With Grandma Emilia (Graciana Chironi), her daughters Marta (Liliana Capurro) and Claudia (Ruth Dobel) travel with their husbands Oscar (Bernardo Forteza) and Ernesto (Carlos Resta), plus the kids of the first ones; Matías (Nicolás López), Gustavo (Raúl Viñona) and Sol (Sol Ocampo), and the daughter of the second ones; Yanina (Marianela Pedano) with her friend Nadia (Leila Gomez). Don't be fooled by the actors' names, just like Carlos Sorin, another master of the new cinema, Pablo Trapero uses non professional actors in his movies, therefore just some of them have done things before, and others, like Graciana Chironi (directly related with the director), have only acted in Trapero's films.

Trapero's magic lies in his camera, in how he cares for his story. A story, in this case, full of situations that I wouldn't like to tell because they occupy the whole movie. And they are wonderful like life itself; and messed up and crazy and even incredible sometimes.

Thinking about life as watching the film, it came to me: We fall in love like the characters do because we feel the same, we laugh out loud because we have experienced the same situations they experienced, or we have seen it. We fight like they do: something more realistic is impossible.

I even believe that Trapero directs so close to reality that we could be watching a documentary.

Rolling Family tells the story of a large group of people, more or less members of the same family name, journeying from one side of the nation of Argentina to the other so as to service a long standing and much loved member of their family. It begins and ends with this same elderly woman observing an item, physical in the sense of the opening in the form of some old mementos; but concludes with a pausing and a pondering of something once everything that's happened has happened: new memories have been forged and life goes on. The film has a knowing and sweet eye on life as an item, the bonds that form; the various degrees of love for someone else that unfold; the sacrifices we take on and the hardships we all grind through together. Despite beginning and ending on the same individual, the film is as much about the family within the film as it is her and what she's going through; culminating in an interesting and thoughtful mediation on a number of characters with a number of traits.

Pablo Trapero has written and made a piece that will remind you of another Argentinian film, this time from 2001, in La Ciénaga; alá The Swamp. Its sticky, intimate, close-up, cramped feeling is difficult to shake when you watch it; it's heated, not just by way of the weather but also the attitudes certain characters have towards one another at certain times while its wonderfully free flowing feel will guide you effortlessly from one clutch of characters, young or old; male or female, and their problems to another clutch, all the while shifting tones and atmospheres with the minimal of fuss. But Trapero applies certainly the aesthetic of that to a road film arc, taking everything from that enclosed and very rural, very isolated country house and applying it to a film about a large family crammed into a mobile home as they journey from the Buenos Aires outskirts to the town of Misiones.

People have compared it to 2006's American film Little Miss Sunshine, but it's a bit better than that; it underplays its material, its more interested in its characters than it is interested in attempting to create some sort of 'cult' item by way of the idea that a broken down, dilapidated yellow VW camper van might act as an iconic image of some kind. It doesn't buckle into providing well known actors playing individuals in the most archetypical of manners; rather, we are provided with rough and ready looking people whom have more of a genuine feel to them as these personal and intimate thoughts and studies are played out. Certain characters here react to different things and each are going through changes in their lives at various points, with a middle aged married couple struggling with one another and their child; adolescents feeling certain feelings for their cousins and gruff looking fathers and husbands raging at both toll booth prices and with members of the constabulary, therefore with the state itself, in what is a varied but focused spread.

The film's opening of a large gathering in which a lot of fun is had and many bonds are seemingly enhanced is only the beginning. Elderly woman Emilia (Chironi) announces to everybody at that congregation that she is to travel to the said town of Misiones so as to attend a wedding and contribute heavily to that. The rest of the family take it upon themselves to travel with them in a somewhat rickety mobile home and the adventure is on. Some of the people at the early gathering seem to think they know each other, that they can get along whatever the situation but they learn that it is relatively simplistic to merge with one another at a large and open gathering, when everyone's there to have fun anyway and there's always another space to venture off to with space to manoeuvre. Rolling Family will later consist of enclosed and cramped conditions, in which people are there to journey to a destination with any emphasis on any sort of 'fun'; they are locked in a place in which one may not merely shift to another part of the locale if someone else annoys or frustrates them and they will come to accept a truer form of family bond.

Trapero balances the long and wide open Argentinian roads complete with rural nothingness surrounding them really well with the enclosed interior scenes inside the mobile home. Like The Swamp, Trapero is able to get the most out of both the premise of the situation but additionally make the mostly rural locales they find themselves in as sweaty and itchy as the rest of the film. Here's a film, or a pair of films, less interested in quaint cinematography revolving around beautiful foliage part of a forest but the hot and humid border-line jungle that these characters find themselves traipsing through and existing within so as to reach their destination. I can understand a film about a frustrating road trip to a far off locale as individuals with flaws exist within close proximity to one another in a film with a lazy and sticky aura being a tricky sell, but Rolling Family is worth the effort as these characters and each of their predicaments are given due attention.

There are certainly some wonderful interesting roads in this movie and they certainly do engender the desire to get in a car and drive from Buenos Aires to Misiones; but really at core, this film is about interpersonal family dynamics. This movie is so beautifully observed and dare I say it, made with 'a love of family' perspective probably impossible in the UK. I found it utterly spellbinding. Call me an old soppy but just the opening shot of the great grandma sitting on her bed looking through her box of family photos had me sobbing tenderly. OK there was drama and incident along the route, but the way the family accepted each others foibles and gave each other space, seemed totally magical to me. I know they probably did know each other well in non-film reality, but the way it has been captured on screen is almost visceral. Hey man it was like you were there! I hope Mr Trapero goes on to make more Cool-Greatgrandma pictures and never hands over the casting of his films to an agency.

Unusual, fresh, entertaining and interesting would be the words to describe this movie. It isn't a classic, but it IS a good watch. As I've never been to Argentina, I think it says a lot about the film's quality that it was able to evoke a strong sense of place, and of Argentinian life, and I felt as if I was there.

I see some of the other commenters have complained there was no development or drama - and to some extent they're right, but they're also missing the point that this movie isn't about thrills and surprises Hollywood-style. It's about one normal family doing something unusual, and how they deal with the various problems that occur on the way. That was incredibly enjoyable, not to mention very involving. Lots of humour, some very moving scenes, great direction and acting - it's all good, really. Highly recommended.

This Argentinian film follows a large family from Buenos Aires as they make the thousand kilometre journey to a remote village in Misiones Province. They are making the journey because eighty four year old Emelia has been invited to be maid of honour at her niece's wedding. Four generations of the family pack into a camper van for the journey. Along the way various things occur that effect the family. Some of these are comic, others lead to tension and there is even romance... between two teenaged cousins.

I found this film to be a real delight; it might not be full of action or hilarious moments but the characters feel real... not in the common sense of film/TV characters being described as 'real' just because their lives are miserable but because they are a fairly ordinary family. The journey in the cramped van provides some tensions but nothing excessive. The way director Pablo Trapero films the characters in the van adds a sense of claustrophobia but this is lightened by the outside shots of the various characters during the occasional forced stop. The cast, many not regular actors, do an impressive job. Overall I'd say this won't be for everybody but if you are looking for a relatively low-key film with humour, pathos and 'real' characters then I'd certainly recommend it.

These comments are based on watching the film in Spanish with English subtitles.