Se arrienda

This movie is total rubbish!!! Honestly. This is Fuget's first time as director, and I really hope the last one. His script here is much worse than his novels: frivolous, inexpressive, irrelevant. His direction is superficial, plenty of unconnected scenes with no sense of rhythm at all. Minutes and minutes of pointless, affected (and definitively too long) chats are filmed with a poor sense of cinematography. The product of this childish Tarantino's wannabe gives you time even to go to the toilet without missing anything important. Its framing is as bad as its photography. The soundtrack is predictable, plenty of hyper-known 1980s songs; absolutely no contribution to popular music culture. Light direction is deficient: in some night scenes you simply can't recognise faces or tell who's talking; in others, light is so bright that actresses look like corpses and actors like Dracula. The whole thing is pathetic. I gave two stars just to the few good actors performing here (Cruz-Coke, Lewin, Saavedra). Half additional star could go for Ignacia Allamand's nice-nice bottom.

I don't know what can be thought about this film in the rest of the world, even in the rest of Chile. Because it talks about something in particular, and I do not really know how universal it is. I cannot look at it objectively. I am part of it. I know it. Never had a movie touched me so close, and I mean in the geographical but also in the heart. Because it is like my best friends talking about us - it is mad. And it is also marvelous. I know the movie is at least good. I don't know if amazing for the rest... for me it is. It is marvelous. Brilliant. Honest. So honest in fact, it made me cry. I swear the screen became a mirror. And this was catharsis in a way that I had never really experienced this close. Chilean cinema has been plagued forever with anecdotes. Anecdotes that do not have much to say apart from the action and only in a residual way. This is a cinema that takes it's time and talks about himself. Alberto Fuguet, the director, opens his chest and let's us into this world, this world that is my own so in his chest I am myself. It is a beautiful film, very well acted, intelligently shot and with the best dialogue I've heard in some time. And as his friend ask Gastón in a point - if his music is any good... Gastón can only say: "I blush with it - I think it's good".

Then again, who'd want to see this film with such a subjective intent into it - but I do know this: even if it may talk so particularly about things, in doing so it becomes general and that happens here. This movie will talk through particularity to everyone that enlists in it's search and exposition - the communication is culturally worldwide and as such I expect it to go a long way in the hearts of those who experience it, as it did in me.

Cheers.

I wasn't sure before i bought the tickets for seeing "Se arrienda" about making a good choice. I have never trusted in Chilean movies, and i don't like Alberto Fuguet that much. But i took the chance and i sat there for almost two hours and i finally thought it was a good choice. I recognized inside the film a lot of elements taken from movies such as "Lost in translation" -perhaps the environment, music, nostalgic- and some dialogs taken from Tarantino's ideas. For example, the fact of having a long discussion about Julio Iglesias reminded me a lot about the same talking about Madonna and "Like a virgin" in "Reservoir dogs". I guess the 80s were left behind and the main point went straight to fighting against system. "Gastón" is a dreamer and living in New York for so many years and then coming back to Santiago was a big change, coming back even was a mistake. Then he realized that the beautiful world he had as a young man, it was all gone and his friends became pathetic robots, money machines in a fake successful system down the brand new and modern Chile. Santiago seems to be so big and splendid, although is a lonely city, empty by soul and i think Gastón never lost his idea of being forever innocent, musician...dreamer. Congratulation Alberto!! you did a great job trying to portrait the frustration that most of us have. Se arrienda will become one of the representation of the new Chilean cinema, for all of us who even thought we love our shy Santiago and our history, we need to go and see other places following our idea of a better world. Also, this is a warning for those who once outside have the purpose of coming back. We can do it better, we can love better from outside...we don't wanna turn into new Gastón...the past is the past and once you go you wont never get it back... although...why do we have to imagine what's the final resolution between Gastón and the girl!! ... and Luciano Cruz Coke has a place in movie industry, pay attention at him...he throws an incredible interpretation, the rest...MM work harder Good film for thinking about what you really want to be..., Santiago is a long road, it's almost a photography. This movie encourages to keep on going on following dreams of writing a book or having a tree. Life is within music and movies, what we are able to take from them, travelling worldwide to find yourself in your own place.

Fuguet is not a good writer. His stories are not good. He has no style, though i cannot get rid of each of the characters that appear in his stories. Same thing with "Se Arrienda". Braun and Saavedra perform as awful as one can expect of them. Cruz-Coke is not that bad (he was good at "dos hermanos". He was outstanding at "largo viaje del día hacia la noche", he was so bad at "Señorita Julia" -which was directed by Braun-, and please let us forget, "Enigma"). Evidently, Francisca Lewin and Ignacia Allamand are the one making the best effort here. The story is simple. Those of you who know by heart "una Vida modelo" will recognize some of the characters. But even if you feel something is missing here, that is not well solved or settled, the film still works, as Fuguet's books. The music is outstanding! And there are some details that one can forgive because of the needed marketing, as Villouta's (each day in a more Viñuela way) appearing talking about nothing. Fuguet is great. Don't know why really, but his stories and "se arrienda" worth the while, definitely.

I don't know exactly how to comment this movie 'cause i've been waiting for it from a long time ago. I was afraid that all my expectations were fake and that the movie was a bad one, but all can i say is that i really like it. I'm not gonna tell the story 'cause others guys already done, but i can tell you that is a deep look to many of us, like Gaston(Luciano Cruz-Coke) who is really scared about the future, the way his life is going to turnout,how to make his dreams come true, become the one that he wants to be and not the one who they want him to be. I believe that something happens to many of us, in different levels. Gastón speaks through the music and through the images of "las hormigas asesinas" (an already classic history for the ones who have read Alberto Fuguet's Books). Is the story of a reconciliation with yourself and your world, of knowing yourself and what you want, is a story of many of us that doesn't always know how the tomorrow is going to be, that has a believe. Go to see this movie, enjoy it, "it's a long story".