Review of The Adopters

The Adopters (2019)
7/10
A gay couple between marriage or adoption
25 December 2020
Martín (Diego Gentile) and Leonardo (Rafael Spregelburd) have been a couple for ten years. The first is an actor who became famous as a host of entertainment programs and the second, an agricultural producer with environmental and social sensitivity. During a dinner, when Leonardo is about to propose to her, Martín comes up with the proposal to adopt a boy / girl. Sooner rather than later this leads to a crisis in the couple.

This dramatic comedy by Daniel Gilmelberg (located at the antipodes of I am afraid of a bullfighter) presents two successes in his approach. The first, to present a consolidated, loving and middle-aged gay couple (with some sexual scene play, even), moving away from the standard of youthful and often Apollonian protagonists of Argentine LGTB cinema.

The second success is that the approach to the issue of adoption (and other conflicts that arise) is almost independent of the gay nature of the couple, with a "normalization" unthinkable years ago. This naturalized look from the film on this male couple is a bold trait.

As for the adventures of the protagonists, which at some point bifurcate, Martín's bet more on comedy, incorporating his family and work environment, trying with uneven success to enter the field of plain and simple comedy. The dialogues between him and his sister are very good, by Valeria Lois (one of them, in sequence, remarkable) and the appearance of a character by Florencia Peña introduces notes of picaresque ease.

Leonardo's subplot, which is related to his past, with a tone more in keeping with his character, in my opinion is the most interesting part of the film.

The film is educational in terms of the problems and bureaucracy of legal adoption in Argentina and in its own way distances itself from other possible paths, such as biological paternity.

As I pointed out their successes, it should also be noted that this upper-middle-class couple, due to their concerns and their choices, represents a gentrified model of a gay relationship. Paradoxically, the audacity and progressivism of the "normalized" approach also carries at the same time a perhaps conservative moral.
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