| ARGENTINA |
| CLEOPATRA |
Eduardo Mignona |
Mignona’s warm romantic comedy celebrates
the courage to make choices. Cleo (Norma Aleandro), a retired
teacher, has been married to Roberto for 37 years. So far,
Cleo has been whatever she has been expected to be: a good
mother, a good wife, a trustworthy partner. But at this point,
there must be something more. When she flubs an audition for
a soap opera, Sandra (Natalia Oreiro), a 20-something TV star,
consoles her. Sandra is also whatever others have made of
her: a popular celebrity, bulimic, whimsical and contemptuous.
When Cleo decides it’s time to leave her drunk, despondent
husband, Sandra decides to dump her producer-boyfriend too
and, on impulse, the two women embark on a three-day road
trip that takes them from Bueno Aires to a little town in
Cordoba province, and then to the Andes. Along they way they
laugh, cry, dance, listen to each other’s tales, hook
up with an animated truck driver and shake the foundations
of their lives. Best Latin American Film Prize, Montreal Film
Festival. (105 mins.) Print courtesy of Patagonik.
Selected Filmography: Flop (90), Autumn Sun (96), The Lighthouse
(98), Adela (99), The Escape (01).
SHOWTIMES: 2/25, 7pm WH
and 2/27, 9pm WH. |
|
| VALENTIN |
Alejandro Agresti |
This year’s Argentine submission for
the Best Foreign Film Oscar delivers a fresh and amusing variation
on the premise that growing up is never easy. In a modernizing
Buenos Aires in the late ’60s, young Valentin lives
with his cranky, eccentric grandmother (Carmen Maura) after
the bitter separation of his parents. Valentin dreams of being
a NASA astronaut, but more than anything longs to see his
mother, who has been unaccountably absent ever since his parents
parted ways. Valentin’s world undergoes an unexpected
change when his father brings a new woman to meet him—the
latest in a long line of girlfriends who his father inevitably
introduces as a potential new stepmother. As the young boy
opens up to this free-spirited beauty, his life begins to
change in sweetly unanticipated ways. Delicately balancing
sometimes absurd humor and rich emotional drama, Agresti fashions
a classic story of a young boy’s coming of age. (86
mins.) Print courtesy of Miramax Films.
Selected
Filmography: Love Is A Fat Woman (87), Secret Wedding (88),
The Act In Question (93), Buenos Aires Vice Versa (96).
SHOWTIMES: 2/13 , 7:30pm B1
and 2/17, 7:45pm WH. |
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