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.