Idiosyncratic, urgent, often lyrical voices have been coming out of Argentinean filmmaking in the past decade, all concerned to some degree with cracking the urban self-image and bourgeoisie façade of that country. To name only a few, there’s the late Fabien Bielinsky (“Nine Queens,” “The Aura,” now playing); bold young naïf Lisandro Alonso (“La Libertad,” 2001); “Los Muertos,” 2004, opening in January at Facets); Lucrecia Martel (“La Ciénaga,” 2001; “The Holy Girl,” 2004); Celina Murga (“Ana y los otros,” 2003) and Daniel Burman. The Jewish Buenos Aires-based writer-director’s “Lost Embrace” (2004) heralded a fresh perspective with a pleasingly literary mingling of comedy, sex and yearning, the sort of cannily measured mix of time, place and conflict, set in a recognizable contemporary city, that makes a certain familiar question even more irrelevant: “Why don’t people make movies like Woody Allen used to?” Burman’s “Family Law” (Derecho de familia) finds the 33-year-old exploring the relationships of fathers and sons for a third time, and the semi-autobiographical dramatic conflict between a young man entering the trade of his colorful father and what legacy he will leave his young son is mostly sunny. Understatement is Burman’s forte: he’s very good at it. 102m. (Ray Pride)
Ray Pride is Newcity’s film critic and a contributing editor to Filmmaker magazine.
His multimedia history of Chicago “Ghost Signs” will be published in 2023.
Previews on Twitter (twitter.com/chighostsigns) as well as photography on Instagram: instagram.com/raypride.
Twitter: twitter.com/RayPride