Our reviewers select and review the best independent and foreign films on amazon.com, cd universe, and netflix

The Secret in Their Eyes (Argentina 2009, 129 min. dir: Juan Jose Campanella, cast: Ricardo Darin, Soledad Villamil).

If Ricardo Darin were an American actor, he’d be getting all those Liam Neeson roles. Obsessive, frantic, single minded but never quite getting the girl. His films on Movie With Me include Son of the Bride and Nine Queens. The Secret in Their Eyes is another amazing addition to the list. (Both Son of the Bride and The Secret in Their Eyes were directed by Juan Jose Campanella; a master who is always emotionally on target)

Here Darin is a retired justice department investigator writing a book on an old case that went cold. A woman was brutally raped and murdered when he was a young agent working under department head Irene Menendez-Hastings (Soledad Villamil). She was the upper class lovely who got her superior position after returning from her Ivy League education in the US. The last thing she wanted to do at the time was jeapordize her career because of suspicions about this one case. Especially because she was atracted to Benjamin (Ricardo Darin) and he to her. Both resisted their feelings because of the difference in their ages and the class barrier between them.

But now it is many years later. She’d risen to the top of the justice department, and he is grey-haired and ready for his pension. What could have been between them was never was. But the old never-solved case still links them together. And that is enough to light the flame between them once again and bring them to admit two things: they love each other and always did; their passion for justice has never slackened.

Together they open up the can of worms that is Argentina’s answer to the Holocaust: the years when the military junta ruled the country (called The Dirty War), and “disappeared” tens of thousands of people to unmarked graves. It was a ten year reign of terror from which the country, or at least the country’s filmmakers, have yet to recover. Like the Germans, everyone knew and didn’t know. Everyone wanted to save themselves even if it meant turning their back onon friends.

The Secret in Their Eyes opens an old wound and new passion. That it what it makes it such an interesting mix of emotions between Darin and Villamil (she’s in Life Accroding to Muriel, also on Movie With Me). Some fires never die, some embers burn forever – is the old saying. An intricate story and a fine range of emotions give heart to an old love made new again in this very excellent movie.

Chronicle of an Escape (Argentina 2006, 103 min. dir: Israel Adrian Caetano, cast: Rodrigo de la Serna, Nazareno Casero, Lautaro Delgado, Matias Marmorato).

Why does torture inflame our imagination in ways love never does? Thanks to a 1976 coup by its military leaders, little Argentina is up there with Nazi Germany in the torture Olympics. Of course the number of Argentine films about this era is nowhere near the number about Nazi Germany, but they are all first rate.

Chronicle of an Escape (also called Cronica de Una Fuga and Buenos Aires 1977) is up there with the best about this purge like The Official Story, Garage Olimpo, and The Secret in their Eyes. Based on true stories told by the victims, this film is the story of a group of young men held in an old mansion in the suburbs of Buenos Aires and subjected to endless torture until they managed a daring escape.

At one point the lead torturer remarks, “This is how the FBI started.” Not exactly correct, but the resemblance to CIA black prisons is very clear. The “Dirty War” in Argentina went on from 1976 to 1983. It was methodical, government sponsored violence and torture to rid Argentina of any leftist or Communist elements. And estimated 13000 people were killed. A favorite way to dispatch prisoners was to drug them, put them on airplanes, and dump them from altitude into the sea (see Garage Olimpo).

This kind of fun didn’t stop until the military government overstepped its limits and invaded the Falkland Islands. The British promptly responded, drove out the peasant soldiers and their portenos leaders, and reduced their army to scrap metal.

So why is it we love torture movies? Because sadists are so much more imaginative than nice people. One of the coolest scenes in Chronicle of an Escape is stripping the prisoners naked, chaining them to their beds, standing on top of them while moping them with disinfectant. Who could invent stuff like this but a gifted sadist?

Lion’s Den (Argentina, 2008, 113 min, dir: Pablo Trapero, cast: Martina Gusman, Elli Medeiros, Laura Garcia, Rodrigo Santoro.

If you have a child in prison you can raise him/her until the age of four. After that guardians take over. But between one and four resides all the anguish of a motherhood that will end.

What starts out as a women in prison movie slowly morphs into a character portrait of a woman who loses all sense of the passage of time. Julia (Martina Gusman), has only one touchstone to the passing of days: the growth of her little son Tomas. Tine passes with him towards the inevitable day when he will be taken away from her. There are two villains in this movie, and one true friend.

The villains are her former lover, Ramiro (Rodrigo Santoro) who survives the bloody night in their apartment where her other lover is murdered. She has been living with the two men (she claims) against her will. Tomas is the child of the murdered man and the only witness is the other defendant, Ramiro. They wait in jail for the outcome of the court case (a peculiarity of Argentine law).

But Ramiro turns against her in his testimony, and she is sentenced to ten years. The other villain is her mother, Sofia (Elli Medeiros) who has been absent living in France for years but comes home supposedly to help. What she really wants is Tomas.

Julia starts to engineer her escape, but like everything else in the chicken cage of prison, she keeps it from everyone but her prison confident, Marta (Laura Garcia). When it happens, we are as surprised as the guards.

Watching a film like Lion’s Den you want to scream “where has this been?” and “why did I not know about it” and “why haven’t the director and his actress been proclaimed king and queen of cinema?” Actually they may not be king and queen but they are husband and wife. And Pablo Trapero has a long history of directing and producing films about social causes and social injustice. Lion’s Den is a great addition to the list.

Cautiva (Captive) (Argentina 2003 115 min, dir: Gaston Biraben, cast: Barbara Lombardo, Susana Campos)

You are 15 (but actually 16), when a judge takes you away from your parents, who are not your parents, and sends you to live with the grandmother you have never met.

There have been many films about ” the disappeared” in Argentina. From 1976 to 1983, the military dictatorship waged a campaign of terror against any suspected dissident. People were taken from their beds in the middle of the night and thrown into secret prisons to be tortured and killed. One of the best films, and earliest, was The Official Story (1985). In The Official Story, a couple adopt a baby and the wife grows suspicious and goes in search of the real mother.

The point of view of Cautiva is the opposite: that of the child. Cristina, or Sophia as her mother called her at birth, is swept up and displaced not in the era of the disappeared, but in the era of the found.

She lives a normal middle-class life with her parents until she is hustled out of school one day and taken to confront a judge who informs her that her parents are not hers, her name is not hers, and the people she must go to live with are relatives of her real parents who disappeared back in 1978.

The focus of Cautiva is unearthing the history of that period through the eyes of an innocent who is both hurt by it and changed by it. Through a girlfriend who has experienced a similar shock, Cristina learns about her mother, about the moment of her birth, and about the way she was taken, as a day old infant, from her mother; who was then killed.

Floating through the story like an evil apparition is Henry Kissinger, the American political front man who not only worked with the dirty regime in Argentina but also showed up for the 1978 world cup soccer match as an invited guest of the dictators. The film seems to imply that America has no cleaner hands than the ruling generals.

And so it may be. But the focus here is on Cristina and the very troubled life of a teenager learning she is not the child of her parents. This is both the dream and the nightmare of every child. Here Cristina’s nightmare finally becomes her salvation as she learns to live with the truth.

Life According to Muriel (Argentina 1997, 98 min, dir: Eduardo Milewicz, cast: Soledad Villamil, Florencia Camiletti, Ines Estevez, Jorge Perugorria).

When an actress bursts out in full stardom we often wonder where she has been all of our movies lives. How could someone so appealing and sexy be hidden so long?

The answer with Soledad Villamil, the amazing presence in the Academy Award winner, The Secret of Their Eyes, can be found in this little know Argentinean film about a mother and daughter’s journey to Patagonia.

Escaping from an unhappy relationship, Laura (Soledad) flees Buenos Aires with only the possessions she can stuff in her car, including her daughter, Muriel (Florencia Camiletti). When they’ve driven far enough to take a breath, Laura pauses at a roadside viewpoint high above a beautiful Patagonian lake. While they take a picture of themselves in their new freedom, the car rolls forward and plunges into the lake.

Is it comedy or tragedy? A little of both as they trudge to a nearby inn run by Mirta (Ines Estevez), another refugee from a bad relationship. The inn becomes their fortress as the three forge a friendship that cannot be penetrated by men (nor, for that matter, can they be penetrated by men). Until Ernesto (Jorge Perugorria), Muriel’s father, shows up and camps in his car until he captures Muriel’s heart. Laura eventually succumbs, and maybe, just maybe, the little family can make it work this time.

The mixture of anger, hurt and self-preservation that flips in an instant to sensuous need is all here in Soledad Villamil’s performance. It is a blueprint for the qualities that have made her so special. She is so easy to look at you shouldn’t ignore the performance of the daughter. It is, after all, life according to her (Muriel). This film has a core of heart and soul that spins in all directions, enveloping the characters and the landscape in a glow that just feels good.

Conversations with Mother (Argentina 2004, 94 min, dir: Santiago Carlos Oves, cast: China Zorilla, Eduardo Blanco, Ulises Dumont)

If you watch enough Argentinean movies you realize they use a small group of players. That’s not surprising. But they are all so good! If there was a Walk of Fame in Buenos Aires, China Zorilla’s star would be outside the top tango club. She started as a dancer, became a comedienne, and then a very accomplished actress.

Elsa & Fred is reviewed on MovieWithMe.com. In Conversaciones con Mama (look it up on Netflix under this Spanish title or you won’t find it), she plays a widowed 82-year-old woman whose 50-year-old son loses his job and wants to move himself and his wife into her apartment.

Not a lot to ask of mama. But in his conversation with her he finds out she is not alone. She has a 69-year-old lover whom she caught eating the food she leaves outside her door for stray cats. One thing led to another and she invited him in.

What is wonderful about China is that she exudes energy at any age. In Elsa & Fred she bounds out of a fancy restaurant leaving the check. In Conversaciones she has no qualms about taking in a homeless lover. He may be coming for the food but, she hints with her smile, the real feast is in the bedroom.

There are people in the world who worry their way through life, and people who live moment to moment. The latter have a gift to give us all…even if it is only acting.

Nine Queens (Argentina, 2000, 114 min, dir: Fabian Bielinsky, cast: Ricardo Darin, Gaston Pauls, Leticia Bredice)

Criminal (USA 2004, 87 min, dir: Gregory Jacobs, cast: John C. Reilly, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Diego Luna)

How can one movie be a hit and the remake a dud? What goes wrong is always a mystery but it follows the old rule: you never know how it will turn out.Nine Queens is an Argentinean classic.

A clever grifter recruits an understudy to help him with the big one: he’s got his hands on forgeries of a priceless stamp collection (the nine queens are the faces on the stamps). He’s going to sell them to a visiting billionaire for big bucks. Most of the action takes place in the hotel where the billionaire is staying, and where the con man’s sister is, conveniently, the concierge. The deal gets rough when the billionaire throws in an added condition: he wants to sleep with the grifter’s sister. She hates her brother, and grinds him into the ground on the deal for her ass.

Great idea, very original. The writer/director was an assistant director most of his short career (he died at 47 of a heart attack while casting a commercial in Brazil). Nine Queens is his lasting memorial. You can’t find much wrong with it, and the casting of versatile Argentine actor Ricardo Darin (see clip: Son of the Bride on MovieWithMe.com) and fetching Leticia Bredice (click for her Playboy photos) is inspired.

So why did it bomb in the American remake? What are the clues? Remember the phrases “writer/director,” “versatile,” and “playboy.”

The American director, Gregory Jacobs, is also an accomplished first assistant director. Criminal is his one of his few (shared) writing credits, and his solo directing gig. I suspect he got this break because of pals on a lot of big Hollywood pictures he’d worked with as First A.D. Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney are the producers of Criminal. Their clout probably landed John C. Reilly and Maggie Gyllenhaal. THAT was the big mistake.

Movies are conceits. If you don’t believe what’s up on the screen is real you’ll take your popcorn and go home. Maggie Gyllenhaal is very talented, but upper class. I’ll NEVER believe she’s going to fuck a guy for her brother’s con game. Leticia Bredice will sell her body to anybody for the right price, including Playboy.

There’s an old saying in movies, “you can’t play working class, you either are or are not.” Maggie is a gifted actress, but she’s no Stella Kowalski (A Streetcar Named Desire). I’d cast her as Blanche Dubois.

John C. Reilly is no Ricardo Darin either. He’s also a wonderful character actor who specializes in sleazy bumblers. (see clip: The Good Girl on MovieWithMe.com). If he’s playing a bumbler and you know he will lose, so what’s the surprise?

Look at clips of the same scene from both movies. Leticia/Maggie are walking up to the billionaire’s hotel room door resolved to carry out their end of the bargain. See whom you believe.

Elsa & Fred (Argentina/Spain 2005, 108 min, dir: Marcos Carnevale, cast: Manuel Alexandre, China Zorrilla)

Manuel Alexandre has played roles in more films and TV shows than most small countries ever produce. He’s a serious movie actor. China Zorilla is a stage actor in comedies. Can a love story star a comedienne? Put them together and you have a pretty amazing pair, especially since China didn’t do her first film until age fifty.

78 year-old Fred, a widower, moves in across the hall from Elsa. She tells him about her life but it isn’t true. This woman wraps beautiful lies the way most people wrap Christmas presents. But she’s charming. You could put Elsa in a stalled elevator and she’d make friends with everyone in the car. What she doesn’t have is much time.

She’s suffering from-does it make a difference? It’s her secret. It’s going to kill her soon, so her fling with Fred is the last round. She leads him through adventures only a daring twenty-year old would try. My favorite is ordering a meal at the most expensive restaurant in town and then bolting the check. Who would suspect a grandma and grandpa doing their arthritic walk for the door were actually running for it?

Elsa has one last wish to top them all. She wants to go to Rome and jump in the Trevi fountain, just like Anita Ekberg did in La Dolce Vita (she was likened to Ekberg when she was young). The life force of Elsa’s character makes this movie.  When Fred finally meets her ex-husband who she claimed was dead, he asks if he would do it again, given all he went through with her. The husband doesn’t hesitate. He says it was a wonderful ride, and she is an original. So is Elsa & Fred.