When crime meets poetry

Rating: 9/10 (14 August 2013)

It is never easy to write about a movie that you love because the words are never enough to describe the emotions that it gives you. This is one of my favourite movies of the last decade: made with a slow pace and always careful not to let the cruelty of the crime to take over and tell the story. We meet the main characters in Buenos Aires in 1999 when Benjamin Esposito (Ricardo Darin) is trying to write a book about a 30 years old cold case occurred while he was a legal counsellor. Benjamin has been haunted by the past and is in desperate need of closure, still in love with his ex-colleague Irene Hastings (Soledad Villamil) and hoping to finally let the victim rest in peace. A young couple's dream of happiness is savagely destroyed and what remains of it carries such a deep and honest grief that no one is left untouched. Pablo Rago is brilliant playing the young widower Ricardo Morales, his inconsolable but calm way to grieve introduces us to a man made of love and patience while Ricardo Darin, never over the top, portraits a middle age man lost in a limbo of memories and who has waited for years to see his passions for Irene and for justice to prevail. Passion and melancholy are the elements that have made this movie a masterpiece, and the poetry of a director like Jose Campanella has borrowed nothing from overseas: this is an Argentinian movie with an Argentinian heart and this is why it has to be seen in his original language to be truly appreciated because nothing like the Buenos Aires's accent will rock you through the events. My vote 9.5/10