Reviews

It comforts me to think this production allows some folks to make a living because, for the audience, it is a major disappointment. I wouldn't recommend that anyone spend time watching this.

The best part is actually the opening credits and music. The worst is most of the rest, especially the script (an 8 year old might have done a better job), the direction, and most of the acting. Barbara Lennie and Aron Piper do a good job trying to save themselves from the poor direction, but they are rather exceptional in this sense. The photography is decent, which is one of the reasons I'm not rating this lower.

This film is full of surprises. The first surprise is the poor acting; not just Ugarte's, but everyone else's too. Then it's the poor direction, lack of rhythm, clumsy dialogues, incoherent intonation, and everyone spitting out lines faster than a machine gun. As the story unfolds, an even poorer script reveals itself in all its glory; one finds this hard to understand until the final clue is revealed: Pedro stitched together several of Alice Munro's tales to make this salad. A few honorable exceptions manage to stand out from this sour mix: Grandinetti's acting (thank you!), a few, just a few, of de Palma's scenes, and Chavela Vargas. Not enough to make it worth the pain, though.

This is so bad it may actually create a cult. It is an industrialized version of what we call "vergüenza ajena". The story has no subtlety, arguments are superficial and poorly reflected in the script, and the acting has the level of a high school performance. The music is not bad, though. You may as well just buy the soundtrack.