Flick of the Day: Elefante Blanco / White Elephant

Argentine film-maker Pablo Trapero has over the years developed quite a knack for successfully marrying complex social issues in his native Argentina with excellent story telling  and an eye for dramatic flair. Over the years, we have reviewed a number of his films for The Daily Flick including El Bonaerense, an engaging look at police corruption and 2010's  thrilling Carancho. The latter film stars Ricardo Darin, perhaps the best and most definitely the busiest actor in South American cinema. Darin and Trapero are reunited again in today's flick of the day, White Elephant, set in the teeming slums of Buenos Aires.

In the Villa Virgin shanty-town of Buenos Aires lies a long incomplete hospital, an icon of broken government promises around which a vast slum has built up. In this melting pot of humanity toils the good priest, Julian, played by Ricardo Darin, Julian strives to complete a new social housing project to free the people from poverty while working with crusading social worker Luciana, played by the incomparable Martina Gusman, to help the local young people escape drug abuse. At the film's open, we are introduced to Julian looking ominously at a brain scan and before long he welcomes a new priest to his staff, the idealistic and conflicted Nicolas, played by Jeremie Renier. Nicolas has recently survived a vicious attack on the jungle mission where he was working. Together the three fight to try and make the lives of the slums residents a little bit better while interacting with a clerical hierarchy who wish to keep the area at arms length and an organised crime element involved in bloody internecine conflicts between the narrow streets of the favela.

At times this is bravura film-making from Trapero, we are immediately drawn into the life at the heart of this neighbourhood, the living and the dying. The film has an epic feel from the beginning as the excellent cinematography by Guillermo Nieto manages to both highlight the scale of the slum and its conflicts while also accentuating the narrow claustrophobic streets that criss cross it. While the work of Julian and his team is worthy, it would not make for enthralling cinema were it not for the fact that as the tensions mount in the favela over the lack of construction progress and a bitter bloody feud between two rival gangs, the faith and belief of Julian, Luciana and Nicolas is shaken if not shattered.    

How this conflict and testing of the character's beliefs plays out is the emotional heart of the film. Ultimately the question asked by Trapero is what is the cost for people who give everything to help people with less than them? This is an often dark film but it is never less than compelling. If the film has a flaw it is that its ending doesn't live up to what has come before. Yet despite this, there is much to enjoy here not least another fine turn from Ricardo Darin. There is enough talent evident in Trapero's work to make me want to see where he goes next because it will surely be something special.

Flick of The Day: El Bonaerense / Buenos Aires

A couple of weeks back we reviewed the most recent film from Argentine director Pablo Trapero, Carancho a journey to the dark side of modern Buenos Aires. Today's flick of the day is another Trapero film, 2002's El Bonaerense. A critical hit on its release, it is a grim look at police corruption through the eyes of a young recruit to the Buenos Aires police force.

El Bonaerense

Zapa, played with a taciturn air of solitude by Jorge Roman, is a locksmith in a sleepy rural town in Argentina. One day he is sent by his boss Polaco to open a safe that has become jammed. An unsuspecting Zapa quickly has his quiet existence turned upside down when it turns out his boss has set him up for a robbery and he is soon behind bars. Fortunately or unfortunately depending on your point of view, Zapa's uncle is an ex-cop and he manages to extricate him from his troubles and send the clueless young man on a bus to Buenos Aires and ultimately a place at the Police training school. As Zapa gradually finds his feet in the big city, he begins an affair with one of his training officers and is gradually pulled into the system of corruption which keeps the system going. Along the way he loses his country boy innocence and becomes the protege of a senior officer named Gallo, played with menace by a strong Dario Levy, before a final confrontation with the man who threw his life this curve ball, Polaco.

The men and women in blue who police the streets of Buenos Aires as depicted in this film are unrecognisable from the typical image of an upright cop on patrol. There is nobody with a stern outlook and a strong moral outlook. This is an entrepreneurial activity. Traffic stops lead inevitably to bribery, a refusal to bow their will leads to violence and simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time can get you killed. They drink, they fight and argue and possess an almost fetishistic obsession with firearms. In short, this city is not for the faint of heart.

Zapa begins the film as a man so naive that he never once questions the possibility that these nice men he is opening the safe for could possibly be up to anything wrong. Yet over the course of the film, he becomes gradually drawn into the underbelly of the city and by the end is almost world weary and no longer the naive rookie he once was. Jorge Ramon's performance remains pleasingly quiet  and understated throughout. He very much carries the film and is perhaps the only moral touchstone in a sea of inequity.

All in all, this is a tense and engaging look at the modern Buenos Aires, post the economic crises of the 1990's. While it takes a grim view of the city, it is atmospheric throughout and to me at least captures a city on the edge but brimming with rhythm, crime, sex, death and life. It is well worth a look.

Flick of The Day: Carancho / Vulture

The recent Best Picture Oscar win for Michel Hazanavicius' critically lauded The Artist highlights the relative strength of cinema produced outside America at the moment. Increasingly over the last decade, I have been struck by how often in a given year the most challenging and entertaining pictures are those produced outside the mainstream Hollywood system. Not necessarily foreign language pictures,  just quality genre cinema made for au audience willing to think, cinema that doesn't feed me plot points like lines on a powerpoint presentation. The Lives of Others, A Prophet and The Secret in Their Eyes would stand out as some of the best work of the decade. Today's flick of the day, Carancho, is another fine film starring Ricardo Darin perhaps best known outside of Argentina for his work in The Secret in Their Eyes. Premièring at the Cannes festival in 2010, it is only now reaching Irish cinemas.

Carancho

The film opens by noting that car accidents have reached epidemic levels in Argentina and that as the number of accidents have risen so have the claims for damages. Ricardo Darin is Sosa, a disgraced former attorney who now makes his living by ambulance chasing and signing up victims for a shady operation called the foundation who pocket most of the record compensation and stiff the injured parties. While out one night working the scene of a fresh carnage, he meets a pretty young doctor named Lujan played by Martina Gusman. They form a bond amid the ups and downs of nigh time Buenos Aires perhaps driven by Lujan's dependency on prescription drugs.  Lujan soon finds out that it is no accident that Sosa is present at all of these accidents and that his is a far murkier world than expected with tragic consequences for both.

Directed by Pablo Trapero, who has previous success as Cannes with films such as 2002's El bonaerense, this is a suspenseful and dark look into the seamier side of life in modern Buenos Aires. Packed with emotional punch and surging with the raw energy of the streets, this is an excellent thriller. While not as good as some of Trapero's earlier work, it is still from the top draw. 

Ricardo Darin gives another assured performance as the conflicted Sosa. While not a bad man at heart, he is prepared to do what it takes to win back his license to practice law even if that means causing accidents for profit. That said, he is not unfeeling and his actions weight on him as the film goes on. Martina Gusman's Lujan offers him a respite from the squalor and the hope that perhaps they can both escape their current lives.

All in all, this is a worthy addition to the genre and a genuine insight into a side of Argentina that will be new to most. A fine script is given weight by some genuinely talented actors. Well worth a look.