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Daniel Hendler as Ariel
Photo: New Yorker Films

LOST EMBRACE
Directed by: Daniel Burman.
Produced by: Diego Dubcovsky.
Written by: Marcelo Birmajer & Daniel Burman.
Director of Photography: Ramiro Civita.
Edited by: Alejandro Brodersohn.
Music by: Cesar Lerner.
Released by: New Yorker Films.
Language: Spanish with English subtitles.
Country of Origin: Argentina. 100 min. Not Rated.
With: Daniel Hendler, Adriana Aizenberg, Jorge D'Elia & Sergio Boris.

"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
January 28, 2005

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