INTIMATE STORIES
Directed by: Carlos Sorin.
Produced by: Martín Bardi.
Written by: Pablo Solarz.
Director of Photography: Hugo Colace.
Edited by: Mohamed Rajid.
Music by: Nicolás Sorin.
Released by: New Yorker.
Language: Spanish with English subtitles.
Country of Origin: Argentina. 94 min. Not Rated.
With: Javier Lombardo, Antonio Benedictis & Javiera Bravo.

The original Spanish title is Historias Mínimas, literally minimal stories, implying small, everyday, almost irrelevant tales. In a way, the film is exactly that: a portrait of small moments in the lives of three ordinary, working-class people. Don Justo (Antonio Benedictis), a lonely old man, finds out that Roberto (Javier Lombardo), a small-time salesman, has seen his long-gone dog Badface in San Julián, a city 200 miles away. Roberto has a crush on a single mother there. That same day, María (Javiera Bravo), a poor housewife and mother, learns she has been picked to participate in a live television show in which she could win a prize.

From their Argentine village to San Julián, each has a different purpose: finding the dog, surprising the client with a birthday cake for her child, and getting to the show. The world will not end, the skies will not fall, and nothing will really change if they don't get what they want. Yet their aspirations become very important through the director's attention to detail. Roberto's feelings for the client are made obvious by the way he obsesses with the cake. María at first explains to her neighbor she can't possibly appear on the TV show. If she leaves her small home unattended, another relative will come, with his wife and children, and take it because she and her husband have "no papers, nothing." Here, the film alludes to a constant problem in Latin American rural areas, of natives owning land for centuries by common law, but with no legal documents to stand against those who conveniently refuse to recognize their rights.

Another example is the use of extreme close-ups. Don Justo is not exactly congenial but grumpy, distant, and rigid in his ways. Yet he is, after all, an 80-year-old man who has had a hard life, and who is living a harder life still, and the camera reminds us of this by constantly closing in on his wrinkles, his watery eyes, and the unease of old age he vividly projects, making him movingly human.

Instead of intertwining the three stories more evenly, María seems forgotten for about a third of the movie, while the film concentrates on the two men. The ending, too, is a bit rushed, and the last scene, focusing on María, isn't perhaps the strongest one, especially since she is the least seen.

However, the story is overall well acted. That many of the supporting characters are portrayed by nonprofessionals is noticeable in only some of the performances. The three leads, though, are natural and endearing. The pace is pleasantly unhurried, and at the same time tense and complex in its own way - like the people whose stories it tells. Roxana M. Ramirez
March 4, 2005