What am I missing?

Rating: 3/10 (27 September 2010)

The over-the-top praise for this film is mystifying. The characters and their motivations range from juvenile to incredible, the pace is tendentious, the writing is banal. The actors do as good a job as they can with a poor script and the cinematography is certainly watchable, though I have no sense of having been to Buenos Aires.
It's simply not possible to suspend your disbelief to the point where you can accept the premises or characters in this film. The trouble Esposito and Irene have communicating with each other is something most people overcome by junior high school, even given that class distinctions in Argentina in that period are probably stricter than here. The reaction of the husband, Morales, from beginning to end is close to fantasy, and as for the way Esposito and Sandoval track down the suspected perp -- preposterous.
So this won an Academy Award and an 8.3 rating at IMDb? What an example of groupthink.