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ROLLING FAMILY
Written & Directed by: Pablo Trapero.
Produced by: Robert Bevan, Donald Ranvaud & Trapero.
Director of Photography: Guillermo Nieto.
Edited by: Nicholas Goldbart.
Music by: León Gieco.
Released by: Palm.
Country of Origin: Argentina. 95 min. Not Rated.
Languages: Spanish with English subtitles.
With: Liliana Capurro, Graciana Chironi, Ruth Dobel, Federico Esquerro, Bernardo Forteza, Laura Glave, Leila Gomez, Nicolas Lopez, Marianelo Pedano, Carlos Resta, & Raul Viñoles.
DVD Features: Making-of featurette. Argentinean & U.S. trailer. Previews. Weblinks.

Little Miss Sunshine taught us that no one can ever love you like your family. Rolling Family’s lesson is more like: “Family. Crazy, isn’t it?” At her birthday party, great-grandmother Emilia (Graciana Chironi, the director’s own grandmother) receives a call inviting her to a cousin’s wedding in the country. When she tells her family her birthday wish is for them all to travel to the wedding of a relative whose name they all uniformly have forgotten, their adventure begins in a van the length of a small sedan.

Like most family dramas, everyone has a problem. Emilia’s daughter, reserved and nurturing Marta (Liliana Capuro), is forced to be in extreme close proximity to her brother-in-law, Oscar (Bernardo Forteza), with whom she had an affair several years ago. He, still in love, relentlessly and not-so-discreetly pursues her. Her teenage son, Gustavo (Raul Viñoles), makes out with both his cousin Yanina (Marianela Pedano) and her friend Nadia (Leila Gomez). Marta’s grown wild-child daughter, Paola (Laura Glave), loves her baby, her drugs, and her husband who gave her a black eye. And that’s on top of all the usual anxieties that every family as big as this Buenos Aires clan would naturally have.

An enjoyable but light film, it departs from its American counterpart. Not a single character learns a lesson by the end. None of them grow or change, or come to any conclusion about their actions. There’s not even a touching spectacle of familial affection. The low-key film ends with each family member continuing with his or her life as an individual, making the whole thing a bit unsatisfying, as it leaves many of the subplots and questions raised unresolved.

DVD Extras: The featurette is as much of a family adventure as the film. It’s here we learn Trapero’s film was filled with non-actor friends and family in the cast, that the motor home used in the production belongs to his father (the Traperos had lived in it for several years), and the purpose of the movie was to make a good-natured, easy-going tribute to his grandmother, who plays the matriarch, Emilia. I’d argue that it’s even more of a breezy, feel-good family affair than the movie itself. Zachary Jones
October 31, 2006