Jamie passion and passionfruit!

An Argentine film by indie director Pablo Trapero.  The film starts with the idyllic picture of a happy and well-off young family in Buenos Aires.  Then a tragic situation sees us reacquainted with the father, Santiago working in the bleak south of Argentina as a hand at a desolate airstrip, living a world full of men, wind, hard work and alcohol.  He is on some search for redemption, for a compass in life trying to remake his life.  What exactly happened we don’t know and how he is going to get going again is a mystery and we start to get a hint at the hell he has been through.  Guillermo Pfenning is good in the lead role and is ably supported by Federico Esquerro and Tomas Lipan.  The female characters are less well drawn.  Patagonia comes across as a character as well with some very good photography and music framing our view of it.  At the end of the day, this is a watchable and interesting film with some very good scenes and some other meandering parts that add little to the work.  It is hard to decide what to think of Trapero’s work – it has some excellent cinematography but it doesn’t quite grab me as much as I feel it should.

¶¶¶