El Chino

I need to say that Argentine cinema is surprising me more and more at each movie I watch. They are decades ahead of us here in Brazil. Not that we don't ever produce good works.

A rich cast and a good script makes Un cuento chino a excellent option to amuse you at any time, being you alone and sad or laughing with friends.

Trust me, the jokes and the faces are priceless. Ricardo Darín is at his best form, doing what he is best of. His character, Roberto, is an slang disturbed man. He owns a ironware store where he always counts hot many bolts are in the box, so he is not cheated. He turn off the lights every day at 23 pm, etc. One day he is sitting there near the airport, watching the planes takin' off, drinking his beer when this china is thrown off a moving cab. Roberto decide to help the poor boy and, since then, their lives will suffer some changes.

¨I've got a Chinese guy living in my house who doesn't speak a word of Spanish.¨

Ricardo Darín has starred in two of my favorite Argentine films: El Secreto de Sus Ojos and Nueve Reinas. Darín is a great actor and he has proved he can do very different roles and manage them well. In this film he plays a quiet grumpy and lonely man whose life turns around when an unexpected visitor changes his every day routine. Un Cuento Chino was written and directed by Sebastian Borensztein, a director I wasn't familiar with until now. He has made a well crafted film by mixing the right amount of comedy with drama. The movie shines thanks to the original script and Darín's performance, along with two good supporting performances from unknown actors Muriel Santa Ana and Ignacio Huang. The film claims to be based on a true story, but actually it is just loosely based on an unexpected incident which had to do with a cow falling from the sky and sinking a Japanese ship. This story actually begins with a Chinese couple in a River who are interrupted when a cow falls from the sky. From that moment on you know that you are in for a very different movie, but there is a perfect explanation for the event. The cow falling from the sky is the only true event about this movie which is a fictionalization about a relationship between this lonely man played by Ricardo Darín and a Chinese immigrant in Argentina. Their failure to communicate is what makes this film so funny.

Roberto (Ricardo Darin) is a hardware store owner who lives on his own in the city of Buenos Aires. He is very grumpy and always complaining, but also seems to live a very quiet and routine life. His house is behind the store so he spends most of his time indoors keeping to his self and collecting newspaper clips of bizarre and rare stories in order to prove that life is meaningless. He goes to bed exactly at 11pm and wakes up the next morning to the same breakfast: coffee and bread. He seems comfortable living on his own. He seems to have had a short relationship with the sister in law of the person who always brings him the international newspapers. Her name is Mari (Muriel Santa Ana) and she lives in the countryside far from Buenos Aires, but happens to be visiting again and is very much in love with Roberto. His life changes when he runs into a Chinese immigrant named Jun (Ignacio Huang) who is thrown out of a cab after being mugged. Jun has nowhere to go and doesn't speak Spanish so Roberto decides to help him. He takes Jun to the address he has tattooed on his arm, but the person living there claims that a Chinese man sold the house to him several years ago. Roberto takes Jun to the Chinese Embassy where Jun can finally communicate his intentions: He has come to Argentina to find his uncle since he is the only family he has left. Despite the inconvenience Roberto decides to take Jun in for a few days until his uncle shows up. This will change Roberto's routine and affect his life.

Darin's character might be grumpy and mean, but he is also nice and has a big enough heart to accommodate a foreigner into his home. He will never expect how this relationship will dramatically change his life, but this relationship is exactly what makes the story work. There are other funny moments like some of the paper clips that Roberto finds and how he recreates those bizarre events in his mind, but the center of the story revolves around him, Jun, and Mari. The story moves slow at times, but it works really well because it shows us exactly how Roberto lived before Jun shows up. Once Jun is with Roberto everything changes and that is what makes for the funniest moments. Un Cuento Chino is a very rare film, but a good one with memorable characters and an unlikely pairing between Darin and Huang that works really well. The film has a feel good feeling to it and once the credits begin to role it's impossible not to leave with a smile in your face. I absolutely recommend this movie which won Best Argentine Film and the Goya for Best Iberoamerican Film in 2011.

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Usually telling the end of a film is considered a spoiler. In the case of Argentinian director Sebastián Borensztein, 'Chinese Take-Out' ('Un cuento cino' in the Spanish version) it would be a spoiler to tell how it begins. I actually watched the usual late comers to the cinema hall and wondered whether the film experience is really complete for those folks who entered even only two minutes late after the start of the projection. So, I won't make the mistake of revealing the start of this quite charming feel-good film, I will just say it's quite relevant.

The film tells the story of a grumpy mid-aged owner of a hardware shop in Argentina named Roberto who lives alone, refusing almost any relation with other human beings excepting his suppliers and customers (well, even with these ones only to the point where they do not walk on his toes). He is a good and decent man, and a very bad communicator at the same time. The last thing he needs in life is the appearance of a young Chinese man, Jun, frightened and disoriented, who looks for his uncle in the search for somebody to support him in finding a new way in a new country and who has no-one to rely on but Roberto whom he met accidentally. None of them speaks any word in the language of the other, and each hides traumas from the bast that justify their own barriers in communication. The whole movie is about finding ways to communicate and building a friendship that will help both in overcoming the hurdles of life.

Films about overcoming cultural gaps doubled by barriers of language and making human communication possible despite of them have been made in the past, the one I happen to remember is the Israeli 'Noodle', which was telling the story of a stewardess who finds herself taking care of an abandoned Chinese kid. What makes the story different in 'Un quento cino' are the background stories of the two heroes and the fact that Ricardo Darin and Ignacio Huang are right on spot for the two leading roles. One of the nice ideas of the film is that Jun (Huang) does not really speak one word of Spanish during the whole film, he speaks Chinese, but no translation is available. The language gap is more than a emotional trick or a comic pretext in this film. It is the very glue upon which the relationship and eventually the friendship between the two characters is based upon. Although it is aimed eventually to be a feel-good movie (and succeeds to be so) 'Un quento cino' avoids falling into cheap melodrama because of the discrete humor built upon the day-to-day situations, also based on the fact that in the absence of words the characters need to use gestures which to some extent remind the pantomime style of the early cinema comedies. A discrete and pleasant film.

Interesting and somewhat fresh. Darin always knows how to insult properly, and we all Love that in Argentina. Its a movie about Life and its Magic, about rare events and Destiny. You will find the story quite relaxing and and end that boosts the movie just enough to make it a really good one. Not a classic so far of Argentinian Cinema in my opinion, I don't see it becoming One, is what I mean. But as I said, Solid, very watchable, funny here and there, and a message, nicely wrapped with good performances. And if you know about Buenos Aires Culture, its always a plus for this kind of movies. But if you are not familiar with our ways here, you are probably gonna miss some things but at the end, its a nice little journey.

I grabbed this DVD from the library with not much of expectations. The reviews on the cover were definitely convincing,but it is expected that no one will trash their own film. Having said that,i haven't seen the cover of "The Room". Surprisingly,the end result turned out to be a good,light comedy which was engaging till the end.

The movie tries to solve every puzzle and clears fog over many issues that stems while watching it. The opening short is a bit bizarre but the story is narrated in a beautiful manner to join the dots. Being a Wes Anderson fan,the small things about characters fascinates me and for a movie romantics,this film has loads of small bits which are likable and pivotal in the story-line. I enjoyed the movie and would recommend to anyone who is looking for a light comedy instead of wasting time elsewhere. Enjoy the movie.