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Reviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films in Theaters and DVD/Home Video
LOST EMBRACE
"A mall is a world of appearances," narrates Ariel (Daniel Hendler), and behind every counter is a story.
Having seen more thriving days, this mall is a multicultural microcosm of Buenos Aires. Aside from
the Jewish merchants and the boisterous Italian family's electronic store, there is the
secretive Korean couple specializing in feng-shui. The story behind the Ariel's counter
is, like the film, small in scale and amiable. A college dropout in his twenties, Ariel
works with his mother selling lingerie. Occasionally he slinks off for a tryst with the
beautiful older woman who runs the Internet cafe down the corridor. His store still
carries the name of his long-gone father, Elias, who abandoned the family to fight in the
Yom Kippur War soon after Ariel was born. Ariel also wants to run away. His dream is to
immigrate to Europe by applying for a Polish passport through a family connection.
Having passed a consulate interview singing the praises of Roman Polanski and
Copernicus, Ariel thinks his life will finally change, but all is not what it seems. His
mother Sonia (Adriana Aizemberg), with flaming red hair, has suddenly started taking a
Hebrew dance class and even dating again.
Filmed in digital video, the hand-held camera work adds to the film's intimacy. Director Daniel Burman
creates an amusing, meandering tale with distinct personalities. (When distressed, the melodramatic and
worrying Sonia routinely threatens to kill herself with a blunt dessert knife.) This contemporary
coming-of-age tale is a distant cousin - though without the moxie and more sentimental - to The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. Kent Turner
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