Reviews

The time is the winter of 1941 and the scenario a Soviet air base near Murmansk. British pilots are around; a wing of the RAF, fresh from success in the Battle of Britain is in operation since September. The wing's mission: to escort Allied convoys to Murmansk in their last leg around the top of Nazi-occupied Norway, subject to attack from Luftwaffe bases. News from the front are largely suppressed although everybody knows the situation is grim. The only point of light seems to be the November full dress parade commemorating the Bolshevik Revolution held in Red Square in defiance of the Nazis during the battle of Moscow, the front only a few kilometers West.

Nikolay Polynin, the commander of the base has been injured and is temporarily laid out. He gets acquainted with Galina, a Moscow actress assigned to a theater troupe touring the front to entertain officers and soldiers. They fall in love, and the rest of the movie is on the ups and downs of their romance, complicated by Polynin's assignment to the Moscow region. The script, cowritten by novelist Konstantin Simonov is witty and mature; characters are sculpted with deft touches and clichés and flag waving are absent. Moral judgments, if any, are left to the viewer and the story is nowhere romanticized or artificially sweetened. There are some intriguing observations (in-jokes?) about the 1941 movie Suvorov, another morale raiser of the time. Direction by Aleksey Sakharov (also cowriter) moves the story along a good pace and the movie is never boring; acting is first rate.

Fatem is a middle aged woman living in a tiny village on the Moroccan countryside with her infant daughter. Her husband, as most able bodied people in the village, men and women, have departed for the big cities in search of work. There is no school, police presence or medical facilities. Fatem ekes out a meager living as caretaker of an unfrequented synagogue and its adjacent Jewish cemetery. Her day is consumed with heavy household chores such as gathering firewood or bringing water from a nearby stream. The tiny local community has a meeting place in the house of the local imam, with a room devoted to Moslem services. The imam performs other services such as reading letters addressed to his congregation, most of which are unlettered.

One day the Imam's glasses are broken. Fatem, who is eternally waiting for s letter from her absent husband offers to travel to Casablanca to have them repaired. Once in the great city she runs into a political demonstration and is wrongly identified by the police as a participant. She also attracts the attention of TV journalists that refer her to the social services.

What is the point of this movie? Perhaps the fact that people genuinely wanting to help perceive things as they want rather than trying to understand the needs or emotions of others. Fatim is a suspect to the police, a victim of police abuse for the journalists, a victim of an unjust social system for the social workers but the reality of her life is never addressed. This is one of these exceptional works that show you real life as stark as grim as it may be. There is no preaching; the conclusions are yours to make. You may be thinking of this movie long after you watch it.

The positives. The lead actor plays Semyon Sapir perhaps with some excess formality but mostly (not always) in a coherent, convincing way. The view of Poland between the wars with its reborn nationalism tinged with chauvinism is generally accurate. There are intriguing snippets of information about the Russian revolution, mostly Semyon's experiences in a Bolshevik prison, whether real or not. That makes the movie a sort of light history lesson.

The negatives. Questionable theaterlike acting from the rest of the cast. Script generally witty but shot through with cliches (e. G. Father Alexandrov is The Bigoted Polish Priest). The coup de foudre and subsequent romance of. Semyon and Katia is unconvincingly portrayed; there is no chemistry at all between the actors. Sets are deplorable, especially the extra wide train compartment that brings to mind science fiction films from the fifties. The whole movie does not rise over just filmed theater. The toy train scenes used to open up the play look silly and there is is a lot of stock footage. And, why the accent in Zakopané?

Perhaps one should add two footnotes. There have been many movies denouncing Polish anti-Semitism but those that murdered Polish Jews during WWII were Germans, not Poles. And, occupying Nazi authorities considered Catholic priests"deadly enemies" and imprisoned/murdered thousands of them.

Tato (Daddy) is Michal, cameraman by profession. He lives with his wife Ewa and his ten year old daughter Kasia. Ewa's deteriorating mental health is putting strain on the marriage and soon the custody of Kasia, either by his father or by her grandmather Jadwiga (Ewa's mother) is in question and motivates a court battle. The decision should be in favor of Michal, but he is no paragon of fatherhood. Although he cares for Kasia he is a philanderer, has a drinking problem and has been abusive in the past to Ewa while under the influence. Jadwiga despises Michal wholeheartedly and will do anything to prevent him gaining custody of Kasia.

So far, so good. The first half of the movie moves at a brisk comedic pace and there are nice directorial touches such as the first scene (that shows the kind of movie Michal works in), and courtroom theatricals are deftly exploited. At this point the film veers into the melodramatic with touches of horror and careens towards an ending so contrived and over the top that seems to belong to another movie.

The positives: excellent acting by the cast that includes some icons of Polish cinema (Boguslaw Linda as Michal, Krystyna Janda as Magda, Michal's lawyer) I watched with pleasure the the first hour of the film. Not so the rest.

Tomasz, in his early forties, has a successful career and is in a meaningful, harmonious relationship with his wife Ewa. They live in a well appointed, airy flat. Wojciech, his father, suffers from schizophrenia. He lives in a public housing project, in a neglected, depressing flat and has alienated his neighbors and local merchants by his violent and asocial behavior. His wife, Tomasz's mother, is around but has given up long ago all hopes of taking care of, or even helping Wojciech.

Tomasz is faced with the usual dilemma of caring for the elderly. Commitment to a psychiatric institution means that Wojciech will be safe and his needs taken care of but it also means he will be exposed to patients in in conditions much worse than his (Wojciech is physically fit and perfectly lucid within his twisted reality). Against his best interests Tomasz refuses to commit his father which makes his life hell; he is constantly summoned for getting his father out of situations. This works in detriment of his domestic and professional life. There is also fear of heredity (Ewa is pregnant).

Fear of Heights (original title) is a disturbing, atmospheric film. Cinematography favors cold colors, which increases the feeling of unease and tension Acting is first rate, especially from Marcin Dorocinsky (Tomasz) and Krzysztof Janicki (Wojciech) who are on screen most of the time. A beautiful but difficult film, an immersion in anxiety.

In 1866, writer Lev Tolstoy met on a train with Lieutenant Grigory Kolokoltsev, on his way to his place of service, a regiment in Tula province. Kolokoltsev was an admirer of the writer and was received in Tolstoy's estate, Yasnaya Polyana. In one of his visits he told Tolstoy about a tragic incident in his regiment: the clerk Shabunin hit the company commander, for which he was facing a court martial and threatened with execution (this barbaric rule was not limited to the Russian army). No one (except for a few diehards) wished Shabunin dead, but circumstances brought his demise closer. His presence was inconvenient for everyone; from the sergeant major, whom he helped hide the theft of soldiers' money, to the colonel himself, facing an audit.

Tolstoy volunteered to be the defendant's lawyer and made a brilliant speech at the trial. Kolokoltsev was a member of the jury deciding Shabunin's fate and was faced with a stark choice between his conscience and the furthering of his career, which is the center of the movie. The original title is History of a Destination, Kolokoltsev's destination to his regiment.

The film shows what could be the root of Shabunin's plight, soldiers in relative reclusion in peacetime. Not unlike in a jail the strong are left alone, the weak are endlessly abused and bullied and sadistic, superannuated officers vent their frustrations by forcing soldiers into senseless exercises and discouraging good initiatives (such as alphabetization of the rank-and-file). We then begin to understand how Shabunin's rage led him to his fateful fit of violence.

Out of this material, director Avdotya Smirnova has assembled a period piece where the reconstruction of time and place is flawless, supported by excellent cinematography. Acting is uniformly good for all concerned, especially from the principals Aleksey Smirnov (Kolokoltsev) and Evgeniy Kharitonov (Tolstoy). A movie to watch.

Fortyish Magalí works as an assistant nurse in a Buenos Aires hospital. She is just a notch above poverty and lives in a no star hotel with a dog as unique companion. Her earnings are insufficient to bring her preteen son Felix to live with her, so he has has been left with Magalí's mother in Susques, in Argentina's northernmost province of Jujuy. One day she receives a phone call with the news that Grandmother has died. Magalí takes the bus to Susques, but she is late for the funeral and the burial. Felix greets her with oblique looks: he resents having been abandoned but fears the freedom he enjoyed with Grandma will be lost in the big city.

Susques is a village in the Jujuy sierras, sitting on a high plateau at almost 13,000 feet surrounded by arid hills, cliffs, crags and denuded ravines. Vegetation is scarce and the place seems to barely tolerate human presence; a few settlers manage to eke out a living out of small herds. Magalí undergoes a subtle transformation in Susques. Supressed memories surface; folk songs, rituals, folk tales, superstitions. She did not come in search of her roots but the past, long suppressed, catches up with her and perhaps influence her plans for the future.

In this film, the stark, darkly beautiful landscapes of rural Jujuy are as much of a character as the humans walking on them, and the cinematography of Lucio Bonelli does justice to their menacing beauty. Director Juan Pablo Di Bitonto has assembled a movie where a tale is told sometimes by words, sometimes by subtle gestures. This would not work without the excellent acting, especially from Eva Bianco. A film to watch.

Luis is a retired concertist and composer who lives alone in Córdoba, a city 700 km northwest of Buenos Aires. He spends his days listening to his old classical vinyls and calling on his archaic rotary phone a radio station that awards prizes for recognition of classical music pieces. He has a son, Eduardo, a physician living near him and a daughter Raquel. One day he finds out from Eduardo that his granddaughter Elena (Raquel's daughter) is coming to stay in his house while she continues her musical studies in the local university.

Luis is a taciturn, somewhat gloomy character. His house is always in twilight, the blinds half down. He does not seem to have friends except for his next door neighbor Margarita. His withdrawal may be the result of having been forgotten by the public. However, there are also other reasons for his bitterness, as we learn in a conversation. His problems are compounded by his need for an expensive medication to treat his glaucoma, for which he endlessly petitions the social services aided by Eduardo.

Elena enters with an energetic air, opens the blinds, and breaks the monotony of Luis' life. The expected clash of generations occurs. She is full of energy, defines herself as a militant and, perhaps unexpectedly, her musical tastes are as sophisticated as those of Luis, although centered on different composers.

Director Florencia Wehbe has assembled a convincing film, whose short length matches the material. Helped by excellent acting, boredom never sets in and the final result is very watchable. Why Mañana tal vez (Tomorrow maybe)? Maybe it means hope for a better future.

Traslasierra Valley (tras la sierra = behind the mountain) is a region in Córdoba Province, Argentina whose tourist center is the town of Mina Clavero. The town and especially its environs, gentle, verdant rolling hills and cool mountain streams are the scenario for this movie. The plot is minimal. Martin, in his twenties, all around artist and world wanderer is visiting his father in Mina Clavero with his girlfriend Yuli, whom he met in Venezuela. Father is a puppeteer and ventriloquist, widowed long ago. Martin also retakes contact with Coqui, a friend from childhood and now a single mother; the encounter causes him to reevaluate the future of his relationship with Yuli. At the end, we see Martin and Juli walking away on a deserted road appraising each other with touches of humor and weighing the possibility of starting a family.

Most of the movie consists of conversations, and success depends on the excellence of the acting. Venezuelan actress Amenda Troconis plays Yulia with subtle, low key gestures and the charismatic Guadalupe Docampo sculpts her character with her usual excellence. Father is enacted by real life puppeteer Rufino Martínez, who plays himself with complete naturalness and charisma. The idea for this movie was born from a visit by director Pablo Sasiaín to Mina Clavero on occasion of a puppet show by Martínez (Sasiaín has a background in puppet theater).

I enjoyed this movie and boredom never set in. All in all the subject is perhaps too meager for a film of this length. One expects to learn something about the town or the characters; we do get some hints about Martín, his father and Coqui, but nothing about Yuli, that remains mysterious. However, the positives outweigh the negatives and make for a very watchable film.

Fortyish Mahan lives with his wife Sayer (Shadow) and their five year old daughter Yassi in a comfortable Tehran flat. He is a filmmaker and his last work is a documentary on (or a reenactment of) a notorious honor killing of a wife by her jealousy crazed husband (we see the ending at the opening of the movie). The channel refuses to show the documentary as is and requests changes in the ending, but before he can do them somebody puts the documentary on the Web. This motivates threats (legal and worse) from the victim's family to the channel and Mahan. He is fired and let to confront legal problems and possible payment of damages by himself

Sayer is at the time not working and looking for some free time to finish her PhD thesis. She decides to look for a job and is recommended by a friend for a position in a somewhat mysterious import-export business. She takes the job and performs brilliantly; the company has business in Spain and she is fluent in Spanish. Her success upsets Mahan who begins to envy Saer, mistrust her and accuse her of nonexistent infidelities. Gradually, Mahan whips himself up into a frenzy of jealousy, envy and mistrust not unlike the husband in his documentary and the situation reaches a crisis at her return from a business trip to Spain.

It would be difficult to find anything negative in this film. The plot is suspenseful without being contrived or artificial, the script fits every character like a glove, acting is uniformly excellent (not unusual in Iranian movies), the cinematography captures equally well the bright colors of the Spanish episode and the gloomy interiors where Mahan dwells. Director Alireza Raisian construct his film fitting perfectly the tale. A must watch.

Director Janusz Kondratiuk was born into a displaced Polish family in 1943 in the Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan. He was married to actress Ewa Szykulska, then to Beata Madalinska. He had a son and a daughter. His elder brother Andrzej was also a movie director born in 1936 in Pinsk, at the time in Poland. He was married to actress Iga Cembrzyska. In 2005, he suffered a stroke and died on 2016.

All of the above are the characters in this movie (no names changed). The film is "based on real facts" but does not claim to be a documentary or semidocumentary, thus we are never sure where facts end and fiction begins. The story centers on the aftermath of Andrzej's stroke, which leaves him almost totally paralyzed and in a diminished mental state. Janusz and Beata decide to take care of Andrzej with some help from daughter and son, and we witness Janusz trying to make sense of the doctors' diagnostic and advise, contending with the national health system and private caregivers and dealing with the ineffective Iga and her covetous sister. The tale is told without exaggerating drama or sentimentality and shows in a strikingly accurate fashion the reality of taking care of a stroke patient with no hopes of recovery. At times the feeling is more lighthearted, with Janusz depicting himself as a sort of man of all work, other times getting back at one or other of the characters. We also get some hints about the brothers sojourn in Kazakhstan.

The movie succeeds mainly because of a witty script and the excellent acting by principals Robert Wieckiewicz (Janusz) and Olgierd Lukaszewicz (Andrzej) who are on screen in almost all scenes, The rest of the cast is equally excellent. Production values are high and everything coalesces into a very watchable film.

Stara Zburivka (Old Zburivka) is a small town, 2500 residents, 25 km southwest of Kherson. Its companion Nova Zburivka (New Zburivka) is larger, 7500 residents, and just next on the map. Officially, both towns have more than 80% Ukrainian speakers (the rest mostly speaking Russian) but this is probably exaggerated and reflects the Ukrainian Government low tolerance for Russian speakers. There is no police station in town thus law and order are maintained by Sheriffs Viktor and Volodya, appointed by the Mayor. They patrol their domain in a beat up, rickety Lada of Soviet vintage painted in Ukrainian yellow and sporting a tiny flag jutting out of a rear window. The town is not cheerful; some houses are in disrepair, backyards overgrown, street paving neglected and mud and slush everywhere (it's winter). The only remarkable building is a spacious, well kept meeting hall constructed in Soviet times.

The film is made of unconnected sketches where Viktor and Volodya, the epitome of cool, deal with situations that range from the trivial to the criminal (drunkenness, theft, invasion of property, domestic violence, finding of a corpse in a stable). The action begins before the Maidan coup; there are portraits of Viktor Yanukovych on the walls. Sometime after the coup old Soviet radios and black-and-white grainy television screens bring the news that President Poroshenko has initiated military action against the Donbass separatist rebels. The townspeople begins to receive draft notices. The rebels attempt to form a new town government and one senses the slow and painful realization that neighbors living by generations at worst in uneasy tolerance must now choose sides in a senseless, fratricidal war which will probably not make their lives better no matter the outcome.

This movie should be called a semidocumentary, since some of the sketches seem staged to some extent (but then that's true of many other documentaries). It shows you reality without preaching or taking sides.

Fact: Fanny Kaplan was born in Odessa in 1890. She became a political activist and joined the Socialist Revolutionaries. In 1906, she was arrested for her participation in a failed plot to assassinate the governor of Kiev. She was sentenced to the katorga (a system of hard prison camps) and served time in several where he lost temporarily her eyesight. She was released in March 1917 by the February Revolution that overthrew the imperial government. Socialist Revolutionaries soon were in open conflict with the Bolsheviks and Kaplan decided to assassinate Vladimir Lenin. On August 1918 she fired at him when he left a meeting on the way to his car. Lenin was seriously wounded, survived but had health issues related to the attack ever since. Kaplan was captured and, under interrogation, she refused to identify possible accomplices and was executed. Her attempt on Lenin unleashed the Bolshevik's Red Terror under which thousands of opponents were arrested and executed sometimes on mere suspicions. There is no evidence she had any offspring.

Director Alena Demyanenko and cowriter Dmytriy Tomashpolskiy have taken what is known about Kaplan as starting points and connected the dots with fictional/conjectural but highly plausible material. The absence of evidence is attributed to the loss of several pages deleted from her dossier by the Cheka, the Soviet Secret Service of the time. One example is: the doctor who helped to treat her blindness was Lenin's brother (probably true) and Fanny had an amorous relationship with him (probably conjecture). Fact and fiction mesh smoothly and this movie, shot in Kiev and Odessa and spoken (mostly) in Ukrainian can be called a success. Acting is first rate, especially from Kateryna Molchanova (Fanny) who is on screen most of the time. Reconstruction of time and place is flawless and cinematography by Oleksii Moskalenko is excellent both in scarcely lighted interiors as in open air scenes. There are nice directorial touches such as lovemaking accidentally activating the clockwork of a bomb and the attempt on Lenin's life shown in reconstructed documentary style.

The original title of this movie is My Grandmother Fanny Kaplan. There are reasons to believe this movie is somewhat different since according to a Web source My Grandmother... opens with interviews with conjectural Fanny's grandchildren, which is not the case with the copy available in the streaming services and titled Her Name was Fanny.

Pryputni is a tiny town in Ukraine, about 120 km northeast of Kiev. It comprises a few paved streets, rural roads and a few houses with plots of land, mostly populated by old people. The language is predominantly Russian, as in much of Ukraine east of the Dnipro River, and the locals are an isolated community; interaction with the outside is minimal.

As the movie begins Khristia, a schoolteacher is conducting a tour of historical sites by her students in Nyshin, a nearby town and having a heated discussion with his boyfriend, cabby Yura. He walks out in a huff and runs into Liuydka and her adolescent daughter Sveta, who have missed the bus to Pryputin, and negotiates with them the 30km ride. The objective is to visit Baba Zina (Grandma Zina, Liudka's mother). After heated discussions with Yura during the trip they reach Baba's house, a modest, somewhat rundown but unexpectedly cheerful home. There, Zina and Liudka engage in endless arguments about wrongs suffered and past failures while Sveta tries to keep her cool. We get acquainted in different degrees with other town characters such as hopeless alcoholic Slavic and his father Stanislavovich.

This film places us in front of human beings sculpted with deft touches. At the end, we know something about some (especially the three women) or we get tantalizing hints, for instance about Slavic's past. The characters' paths intersect at random as on real life. Some seem at first prickly, aggressive and masters of verbal combat, but we learn to appreciate their qualities (such as Yura's indestructible cheerfulness). This is not a small-town-big-hell movie, rather the opposite. There are are moments of whimsy and magic, such as Stanislavovich's first appearance or Slavic's visions of the past. The choice of the town's name may mean something since it carries the meaning of "companions" Acting is flawless and Ukrainian director Arkadiy Nepytaliuk tells the tale smoothly supported by the cinematography of Oleksandr Roshchyn, excellent both in dimly lit interiors as in the vast steppes of central Ukraine.

Most of the action occurs in the Psychoanalyst's office, a spacious, well lighted room. He, sits on a wooden straight backed chair mostly immobile while in front of him his patients sit, lounge or lie down on a comfortable looking couch. We are witnesses to his conversations with various patients: The Flight Attendant, an attractive young woman dressed in red and worried about taking care of her ineffective brother, the Traffic Cop, the Film Director, the Lift Operator, the Trapeze Artist (whom he offends by calling hher "a circus woman"). There is a slight air of unreality in some of these scenes; we never see patients leaving or entering the room and some of them seem to be out of place or know more about The Psychoanalyst that one would expect.

We, the viewers, get tantalizing hints about the various strangers, perhaps incomplete or unreliable. All through these encounters. The Psychoanalyst manages to keep a distance between his feelings and those of his patients, sometimes in a rather brusque and ofputting way. That, however collapses with the last patient of the day that we also see at the beginning in flashforward. Here, the separation between professional and personal becomes impossible, and tragedy ensues. We then realize that the whole movie can be seen from a different point of view prom the beginning.

This film is one of those that you like the better the more you think about it post projection. If was filmed in the Ukraine, with Ukrainian actors but spoken in Russian. Acting and cinematography are first rate and director Anar Azimov does an excellent job of introducing deft touches of unreality in an otherwise straightforward tale.

Elena is 65 and nearing the terminal stages of Parkinson's; she can barely walk with a cane. She lives in a modest but spacious house in a Buenos Aires suburb with her daughter Rita, in her forties, who takes care of Elena's increasing needs. Rita is a teacher in the same high school she attended as a teenager. She is out of a bad marriage and trying to form a new life with her boyfriend Pablo. There are flashbacks to various past times which throw some light on Elena's relationship with Rita and Elena's efforts, not always successful, to be a good mother.

Rita takes one morning Elena to the hairdresser but fails to pick her up. At night, a car stops in front of Elena's house. We see flashing lights though the curtains of the darkened house. A policeman knocks and informs Elena of the sudden death of Rita and asks her to the morgue to identify the body. The police, not without reason considers Rita's death a suicide and closes the case. Elena is not satisfied with the perfunctory police proceedings and initiates a series of inquiries over the possible causes of her daughter's death, that she does not believe a suicide. In the process, she interviews (and antagonizes) the doctor that prescribed antidepressants for Rita's, her students, her friends of high school time and even Father Juan, the parish priest.

I was not convinced. Some of the flashbacks are not smoothly integrated in the tale. At the end we know something about Elena and Rita's past but nothing is very relevant to Rita's suicide or murder. And, there are a few improbabilities in the plot such as: a priest discovering a (presumably) dead body in church premises phoning the police and instructing them to appear only after Mass is over. And, why is Elena informed of the demise of her daughter with an eight hour delay? All in all, disappointing. There are some positives however, one the outstanding acting job of Mercedes Morán.

As the movie opens, Ali Ungár, an 80 year old widowed Slovak Jew residing in Bratislava alights from a train in Vienna and makes his way to an address where he believes SS Obersturmbannführer Graubner lives; Graubner was responsible for the murder of his parents during the war. He does not find Graubner but his son Georg, who is aware of his father's crimes but seems to be hiding something and the two men part in tense, unfriendly terms.

A short time later Georg appears in Ali's Bratislava apartment. He has found a stash of wartime letters that his father sent him during the war from various places in then Czechoslovakia. Georg offers Ali to hire him as a translator to visit the places mentioned in the letters, an offer that Ali accepts since it may throw light on the circumstances of his parents' death. The rest of the movie is on Georg and Ali's trip where they collect information from archives and testimony from surviving witnesses. In the process Ali reconnects with his smart, principled daughter who is running a center for Ukrainian children displaced by the Donbass war and we learn from snippets of conversation a few things about Ali, Georg and their families.

This is a quality movie, one of these that you like the better the more you think about it. It confronts you with deep and possibly unsolvable questions such as: how do you combine normal feelings towards your father if you know he is a mass murderer, how you conciliate with living in a country where many citizens enabled and facilitated the work of the SS and Wehrmacht murderers. It does not preach or pontificate and leaves the conclusions (if any exist) to the viewer. Direction, cinematography and acting are all first rate. A curiosity: Ali is played by Jiri Menzel, one of the key directors that placed postwar Czechoslovakia in the forefront of world cinema.

Norma is a well to do woman in her sixties. As the movie opens, Rosita, her housekeeper of many years brusquely announces she is quitting for a batter job. Norma is taken aback and reminds Rosita that she was "part of the family" (a meme common among wealthy Argentinian families). Rosita reminds Norma that her participation in family festivities was only from the kitchen door. This seemingly trivial incident causes cracks in Norma secure, settled married life and prompts her to reexamine her family and her place in it.

There have been many recent movies on this subject, but Norma holds its own. There is no preaching or social theorizing and the approach is comedic, with many inside jokes. The scenario is the fictitious town of Las Tucas in Cordoba province (In Argentina, 'tuca" means the stub of a marihuana cigarette). Humor is at times subdued but effective, as in the snide observations about Norma's painting by her professor. At times humor becomes raucous as in Norma's misuse of her car. Characters such as the Sophisticated Buenos Aires Psychologist are deftly sculpted, avoiding clichés. Family relations involving Norma's husband, sister, mother and daughter are realistically portrayed and there is feeling and also humor here.

Director Santiago Giralt tells the tale tale smoothly, with excellent sense of continuity and timing supported by first rate cinematography by Guillermo Saposnik. The center of the movie is Norma, played by Mercedes Morán who also cowrote the script. She is in almost every scene and rises to the challenge brilliantly. Another inside joke; Norma is an anagram of Morán minus the accent, but it also means a standard pattern of social behavior in which Norma feels trapped.

Fortyish Marta (Agata Kulesza) and Kasia (Gabriela Muskala) are sisters, Kasia the youngest. Marta is a soap opera actress, enough of a star to be asked for autographs and given advice about her TV persona by fans on the street. She has an adult daughter and she seems to keep her feelings for (and contact with) the family at a minimum. Kasia lives with their parents, is a primary school teacher and in a less than ideal but somewhat functioning relation with husband Grzegorz, father of her teenage son. The title of this movie translates sto My Cow Daughters; the term "cow" is sometimes used by Father (Marian Dziedziel) to address his daughters in an endearing/teasing way free from malice. Father is a successful, well to do architect, lives with Mother in a spacious comfortable house and enjoys an easygoing, warm, but conflictual relation with Marta and Kasia.

As the movie opens tragedy strikes: Mother's various illnesses coalesce and she needs to be hospitalized. This brings the sisters and Father together. For the rest of the film we witness the interaction of family members with each other in difficult circumstances, and it is here that the script by director Kinga Debska comes into its own. There are no superfluous or missing lines; without any outside explanation characters are sculpted with subtle strokes involving snatches of conversation, understated gestures or just images. Accompanying the titles at the end we watch old 8mm movies of the sisters in their infancy; these takes last a a couple of minutes but tell a story that connects with what we already know.

I was fascinated by this film from beginning to end. The loving/bickering interaction of the sisters and their father is uncannily true to life. We learn less about Mother except for a mysterious trip to Budapest with child Marta and its possible consequences. Debska (in her first outing as a director) put on screen her script with unfailing sense of timing and of balance, supported by excellent cinematography and first rate acting from all involved,