CARANCHO SCAVENGES BAYSIDE

One of my favorite films from 2010 is the Argentine dark thriller Carancho (2010), for which I've already provided a critical overview, as well as an interview with the film's director Pablo Trapero. Strand Releasing has picked up Carancho for distribution and I'm happy to announce that the film opens in the Bay Area March 25, 2010 at Landmark's Lumiere Theatre in San Francisco and Landmark's Shattuck Cinemas in Berkeley. Carancho is also scheduled to open April 8, 2011 at Camera 3 in San Jose.

Landmark's synopsis: "In Argentina, more than 8,000 people die every year in road accidents, with each victim representing millions of pesos in medical and legal expenses. Behind every tragedy, there is an industry. Set in Buenos Aires, the film noir thriller Carancho stars Ricardo Darín (The Secret in Their Eyes) as Sosa, an ambulance-chasing, disbarred attorney with questionable ethics. Luján (Martina Gusman, Lion's Den) is a young doctor from the provinces, trying to make a living out of many jobs. Alone, with a work rhythm that barely allows her to sleep, she tries to establish herself in a city unknown to her. After Luján and Sosa's paths repeatedly cross (she's trying to save a life; he's trying to add another client to his portfolio), the two form an unlikely romance that is threatened by Sosa’s turbulent past. With traffic accidents as the number one cause of deaths in Argentina, bodies are currency, and a black market strives to get rich from the personal tragedies that literally litter the streets."

Cross-published on Twitch.

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Argentine Cinema, Landmark Cinemas, Latin American Cinema, Martina Gusmán, Pablo Trapero, Ricardo Darín, Strand Releasing,

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FIRST PERSON RURAL: THE NEW NONFICTION—Lisandro Alonso On La Libertad

"Film must provide audiences the opportunity to discover questions."—Lisandro Alonso.

When I interviewed programmer Diana Sanchez at the 2010 edition of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), she admitted—within the parameters of curatorial taste—her fascination with the appearance of a new genre she was noticing in such films as Pedro González-Rubio's sophomore feature Alamar (To the Sea, 2009), Oscar Ruiz Navia's debut feature Crab Trap (El Vuelco del Cangrejo, 2009), and the films of Lisandro Alonso, José Luis Guerín, and Miguel Gomes; a genre that she described as "a mix of documentary and fiction with a real sense of play between these two forms."

The Pacific Film Archive (PFA) celebrates the appearance and critical popularity of this new documentary-fiction hybrid with their upcoming series "First Person Plural: The New Nonfiction." Jason Sanders observes in his program notes: "In the past decade a new breed of filmmaking has emerged, not quite documentary, fiction, or experimental, but a combination of—or liberation from—all three genres. Lisandro Alonso's La libertad (2001) and Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Blissfully Yours (2002) heralded the beginning of this movement, which, while ranging across years, filmmakers, and continents, still shares several elements: quiet, observational long takes; direct-sound recording; and a 'narrative' that unfolds like a documentary, seemingly just 'happened upon' while the camera was rolling, which is sometimes true, but often false. Tellingly, Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Ilisa Barbash, makers of Sweetgrass (2010), refer to themselves not as 'directors,' but 'recordists'; the concept that reality is merely being recorded, not 'directed,' is key (as is, of course, creating the illusion of this). Most of all, these films share an embrace of a cinema of and for the senses, a way to document and prioritize the natural world through both sight and sound. A pastoral cinema, true, but one that investigates humanity's complicated relationship, or lack thereof, to its environment. This series is largely drawn from the 2010 Flaherty Film Seminar, which considered how film explores work and the agrarian ideal.

"The influences are many: the avant-garde landscape portraits of James Benning; the ethnographic details of Jean Rouch; the contemplative fictions of Pedro Costa, Albert Serra, Lav Diaz, and others. For these sensory recordings of the rural landscape, however, categories like documentary, ethnography, fiction, and avant-garde seem not only outdated, but ultimately worthless. It is the image, the senses, and what viewers find on the screen, and in themselves, that matters."

The series kicks off this coming weekend with Lisandro Alonso's 2001 feature La Libertad, and I felt now would be a good time to revisit my notes taken from Alonso's presentation of the film at the Northwest Film Forum's 2009 retrospective "At the Edge of the World"

* * *

La Libertad (Freedom, 2001) screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, and scored nominations and wins on the film festival circuit, including the FIPRESCI prize. The son of a cattle rancher and disinclined to carry on with the family business, Alonso was a 25-year-old recent graduate of the Universidad del Cine in Buenos Aires when he made La Libertad; "outside of Buenos Aires but within Argentina." Alonso met the film's protagonist Misael Saavedra on his father's ranch. Misael, logger by trade, epitomized non-urban youth for Alonso; his reaction to the then-popular trend in Argentine cinema to revel in urban narratives. Perhaps it was Alonso's rural background that granted him familiarity with Misael's incommunication?

Alonso spent eight months in the Argentine Pampas with Misael. It was a difficult cohabitation because they had little in common to talk about; but, slowly, they developed a trust. Once he gained Misael's trust, Alonso proposed making the film. Fueled by his anger that his film proposals were not being considered by the Universidad del Cine in Buenos Aires, Alonso took on La Libertad independently. The shoot consisted of 10 days with a 12-person crew. The film remained "in the box" for eight months because neither friends nor family liked it. He was frustrated. But then—unexpectedly—La Libertad became a festival darling.

Alonso's method of filming consists of long takes (usually four minutes) which he restructures in the editing room, making minor manipulations to create—as he puts it—"strange expressions of natural everyday things." The result is—as the Harvard Film Archive program capsule

James Quandt observed in his insightful essay "Ride Lonesome": "So matter-of-fact and uninflected is the film's recording of Misael's daily routines (faithfully re-created from weeks of Alonso's close observation of the man's actual life and edited so that several sequences seem to adhere as real-time) that describes—"a poetic meditation on labor and landscape."La Libertad has been hailed as the apotheosis of Bazinian realism."

Quandt further tracked that at Cannes "the film elicited inevitable claims that the boundary between fiction and documentary had been blurred, collapsed, or straddled." Alonso, however, argues that La Libertad is not a documentary, though he grants audiences the sovereignty to think however they want about the film. He stresses his concern is more with the point of view of the audience than his own.

The issue of labor chafes against the film's title. "La Libertad subtly questions the 'freedom' and identity alternately gained and lost by the daily burden of hard labor," the Harvard program capsule concludes. At Slant, Ed Gonzalez notes that "the film's long takes and the cyclical, labored nature of the man's daily grind force the spectator to question the nature of freedom." At Parallax View, Jay Kuehner comments: "Clearly, here was a director who had denuded his cinema down to its sheerest essentials, and what remained was a nominally minimal but ultimately voluptuous portrait of a beautifully forlorn landscape inhabited rather efficiently by a man and his work. Nature, and civilization. The banal, and the mythic. The story was not new—who hasn't worked an arduous day's labor at some time? But the grammar with which it was told was. Radically so." At Elusive Lucidity [broken link], Zach Campbell wonders whether the title is ironic: "Is the protagonist, Misael, free in the nature of his labor and solitude, or is he burdened by its necessity?" "The irony," Robert Koehler concludes at Film Journey, "is that there's nothing absolutely Argentine about La libertad. Its freedom is a freedom from nationality, time-space, narrative laws, camera laws and the expectations that audiences instinctively impose on themselves. But pay attention to the actual translation of the Spanish title: 'Liberty'—a harder, more profound word than 'freedom,' a word pointing to a greater leap, a commitment to an ideal, an identifier for an equation that even describes its opposition—oppression. Liberty is harder-won. Liberty is that thing that the films that really matter aspire to. This one just has the balls to take it as its own name."

In the film's final "quietly confrontational" sequence, Misael munches on roasted armadillo and then stares directly at the audience "as if"—Ed Gonzalez suggests at Slant—"daring us to question or challenge the integrity of his way of life", or what Sean Axmaker describes as "the integrity of the quotidian." "As if" becomes a convenient way to extrapolate Alonso's otherwise notoriously withheld motivations. Alonso admits that by encouraging Misael to look directly into the camera, he deconstructed documentary expectations and created a direct relationship with the audience. Alonso simply told Misael to "act" as if were looking at someone who was eating across a table from him.

The film's original ending had Misael laughing outloud while looking into the camera—achieved by Alonso unexpectedly dropping his pants; but—persuaded by the Cannes Festival to (as Quandt puts it) "remove this Brechtian breach"—Alonso settled for the somber, more atmospheric ending.

Many critics of the film have suggested it would have sufficed better as a short; but, aware that no one recovers costs on a short film, Alonso chose to make a feature in hopes he might recover some of his family's investment. His father was the film's producer.

When La Libertad premiered at Cannes, one of the critics from Cahiers du Cinema complained that Alonso treated his non-actor Misael like he was a monkey. "I'm sorry to tell you, but he's wrong about how I direct my actors," Alonso asserted defensively. "I'm not trying to make any money from the films. I'm not trying to use them." He knows he's working with non-actors and has to develop specific approaches with them. He can't ask them to behave like professional actors. Nonetheless the question of Alonso's artistic sincerity clouded the film's Cannes reception. As Jay Kuehner summarized at Parallax View: "The question persisted whether Alonso's film was, to reduce the argument, an act of abstract humanism. Was it possible that esteemed auteurs held a kind of deep faith in their wounded protagonists yet had little regard in reality for their more immediate brethren?"

Cross-published on Twitch.

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Argentine Cinema, Latin American Cinema, Lisandro Alonso, PFA,

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PSIFF 2011: CARANCHO—The Evening Class Interview With Pablo Trapero

Pablo Trapero was born in San Justo, Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1971. He wrote, directed and edited the short films Mocoso Malcriado (1993) and Negocios (1995) before directing his feature debut, the award-winning Crane World (1999), a black and white 16mm film that proved to be a breaking point in Argentine cinema and that encouraged dozens of young directors into their first features. Crane World was released internationally at Venice, harvesting awards and critical acclaim at film festivals around the world.

In 2002, his second feature El Bonaerense premiered at Un Certain Regard in the Cannes Film Festival, again to critical and audience acclaim. That same year he opened his own production company Matanza Cine in Buenos Aires, from which he has produced ever since not only his own features but also those of other Argentine and Latin American filmmakers, including Lisandro Alonso, Enrique Bellande and Raúl Perrone. "Matanza", Trapero informed me when we met at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), is the name of the neighborhood where he was born and raised and literally means "the killing." El Bonoaerense was filmed there, as were several sequences for Carancho (2010), Trapero's sixth feature and Argentina's official submission to the Foreign Language category of the 2011 Academy Awards®. It's been picked up for North American distribution by Strand Releasing and has been programmed into the Awards Buzz: Best Foreign Language Film sidebar at the 2011 Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF).

As a director, between shorts and TV films, Trapero's credits include Rolling Family (2004), Born and Bred (2006), and Lion's Den (2008). My thanks to Marcus Hu of Strand Releasing for setting me up to interview Pablo Trapero at TIFF and to Doug Cummings for initially publishing the transcript of our conversation at the AFI Fest website.

* * *

Michael Guillén: Let's start with the title of your film. What does carancho mean?

Pablo Trapero: Carancho is a vulture; but—how do I say this?—it's handsome in a way; it's goodlooking. The feeling you have in front of this bird is not like the feeling you normally have in front of a vulture. Still, they eat roadkill.

Guillén: Is a carancho different than a zopilote?

Trapero: Yes. You only find a carancho in the countryside, in the pampa. It's a big bird. The idea is that it represents the character Sosa (Ricardo Darín). Interestingly enough, after the film showed in Argentina, people began using the term carancho to describe these types of lawyers. Recently in Argentina, in fact, the anti-carancho law was announced.

Guillén: Carancho immediately reminded me of a comment made by Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano that the term "accident" to describe a car wreck is inaccurate. Galeano argues that there is nothing accidental about car wrecks; that, in fact, from the moment cars were manufactured and set loose on the roadways car wrecks were inevitable. He said a better word to describe a car wreck would be "a consequence", rather than "an accident". In the case of Carancho, it might be said that it's also a consequence that cars would be rigged to crash. I'm intrigued that you've used a love story to reflect upon this corruption. Why did you move in that direction?

Trapero: The idea was to create a love story within a war zone; to show a love that comes from desperation or an extreme situation. Both ideas began at the same time: the love story and its environment. From the beginning I had the two characters of the lawyer and the emergency room doctor: they're two professions that one sees all over Argentina. I did a lot of research to learn about their worlds. Also at the beginning was the idea of creating a film noir.

Guillén: I'm surprised that you reference film noir because—though others have referenced it as such—you've initially called Carancho "a classic black thriller", which I feel is more accurate. For me, Carancho is not a film noir; it's more a straightforward crime drama. So I want to make sure what you mean by using "noir" in this reference: are you referring to using a relationship to reflect a dark social situation? Social problems that could be considered dark?

Trapero: That's right. But not by talking about those problems. More by having them be present in the background. That's how I mean noir. Through this love story we can guess the bigger picture.

Guillén: One of the pleasures of Carancho for me were its scenes of unexpected violence in situations where I wouldn't have anticipated them. For example, when the drunk man Luján (Martina Gusmán) is trying to help assaults her in the ambulance or—even more so—the gang war in the emergency room. The latter scene, especially, came off thrillingly comic. The audience I was in actually laughed at that scene.

Trapero: Ah, really? Great!

Guillén: Can you speak to your usages of violence, such that at times it's funny and other times not?

Trapero: In both of the scenes you mention, the violence serves as a way to let off steam. It's an escape valve for the intensity of the emotions. Of course, the violence serves a black humor in the film but not everyone understands that and some take it very seriously. But I meant it to be enjoyed, as you say you enjoyed it. And that enjoyment has to do with the contradictions in the situation; the contrast between what Luján is trying to do—she's trying to help others—and instead there's violence against others. In that is a black humor.

Guillén: And no one is better at capturing these contradictions than Ricardo Darín. The carancho is a perfect metaphor for his character because on one level he's contemptible for being an ambulance chaser; but, he's also somehow charming about it. As you described the carancho, there's something seductive in Sosa's predatory nature. In fact, I'm frequently amused in Darín's performances in how he goes about seducing his female leads.

Trapero: Which is the same as saying how he seduces his audiences.

Guillén: Exactly. Though his characters—and particularly Sosa in Carancho—possess questionable ethics, he charms you into accepting his seedy ethics. He's what I would call an operator. What was it like working with him? It was your first time, no?

Trapero: Yes, it was my first time to work with him. Of course, I've known Ricardo since always. I met with him to discuss this project when he was shooting Juan José Campanella's The Secret In Their Eyes (2009). At a very early stage of developing the treatment, I contacted him to see what he thought, if he liked it, and if he would like to be in the movie? We kept in touch about all developments on the story.

Both of them, Ricardo and Martina Gusmán made a good team. I could feel their chemistry from the very beginning. We knew from their first meeting that it could work; that it should work. I spent a lot of time with both of them reading the script in table rehearsals, talking about it, having lunch, having drinks, talking and talking, even more than true rehearsals with the scenes. We went straight from those discussions to filming the scenes rather than directly rehearsing them too much. This was the opposite of how Martina actually works. She spent six months researching her role, once a week doing a 24-hour shift in an actual hospital emergency ward. In effect, she became an assistant to the emergency doctor. Her approach to the role was very old-fashioned, you know? She became the character, little by little.

Guillén: This is your third time to work with Martina Gusmán. What is it in her talent that you keep wanting to film in your movies?

Trapero: It's funny, because when we met a long time ago she was working in a production; that's how we met. But since she was four years old, she's been studying as an actress. When she was 17, she worked with a famous maestro named Carlos Gandolfo, which was unique for her being so young. Martina has deep formation as an actress. What I like about her work is how she goes through her characters. Her attention to detail—movement, her way of looking—this is more important than simply reciting the right words at the right moment. Both Martina and Ricardo are technical in their craft. If I tell them to move from here to there, they always hit their marks; but, at the same time, they can improvise as needed. I like to add new elements to a scene while we're shooting. Take by take, I'm always trying to improve the film, trying to make each take unique. Both of them are good at that. Of course, Martina knows me too well. But it's great to have that foundation and trust.

Guillén: I loved her performance, of course, in Lion's Den; but, have to say I loved her performance even more in Carancho. Let's shift to your sound design. You've used much ambient traffic noise, of course, which I'm presuming was fully conscious?

Trapero: I mentioned earlier about the idea of a war zone, an environment that's really tough on the characters, but I didn't want to just film that on camera. I wanted to bring the mood of it to the scenes, to suggest that life is really tough out there. All the noises and sounds are a way of providing information to the audience, even if Sosa and Luján are just cooking or watching television or resting quietly on the sofa, the audience hears all the living city sounds drifting in from outside their window.

Guillén: Can you speak to working with your cinematographer Julián Apezteguia to capture the feeling of confined vehicular spaces?

Trapero: It was strange to film in such tight spaces and we had a lot of long sequence takes, some as long as eight minutes. We didn't use a steadicam or anything like that. Julián always used a handheld RED camera, though with the assistance of a harness, and we shot in real cars. As for locations, we shot in real hospitals for the ambiance but we also built sets within the walls of the hospital to shoot the scenes in the emergency room. These sets had hidden access doors so that we could effect the long takes going through these small rooms.

Guillén: Lately I've been intrigued by what constitutes a "contemporary" film, especially from the directorial vantage. As your films frequently directly address social issues—such as the insurance fraud in Carancho—do you consider your films contemporary? What does that term mean for you?

Trapero: I like the idea that my films have a dialogue with what is happening in the world off screen; but, I'm not sure if that could be called "contemporary." Maybe it is? My films are more a witness or a portrait of the moment. Even if you are shooting a science fiction film you are commenting upon the moment when you are shooting. It's not a matter of just being contemporary in terms of time, but in views of reality. That's what I like. When you make a film, you can feel the time when you were making the film; but, you can also feel it working on you now when you watch it. I like that a film can last for years and that it reflects the time when it was made; but, can still talk to audiences many years later. That for me is a contemporary film, even if it was shot 80 years ago. I like the idea of talking with movies over time.

Guillén: Can you talk a bit about your production company Matanza Cine? Do you have a signature style to the films you produce? A certain look? Or a certain message you're trying to get across in your films?

Trapero: No, no. What I enjoy doing with Matanza is to help directors throw it out there, to do it in the way that is proper to them, in the way they want to. I help them to have creative control. I give them the tools to help them go through the production of a film and to do it in such a way that the necessary production of a film does not hurt the soul of the film and a filmmaker's unique vision. I try to help them survive the process because sometimes making a movie fights against the spirit of their vision.

Cross-published on Twitch.

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Argentine Cinema, Carlos Gandolfo, Eduardo Galeano, Julián Apezteguia, Latin American Cinema, Martina Gusmán, Pablo Trapero, PSIFF 2011, Ricardo Darín,

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PSIFF 2011: CARANCHO—A Critical Overview

Programmed within my favorite sidebar at the Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF)—i.e., Awards Buzz: Best Foreign Language Film (which this year is featuring 40 of the 65 official submissions to the 2011 Academy Awards®)—Pablo Trapero's Carancho (2010) chases the shrill sound of ambulance sirens. I first caught this film at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and feel now is a good time to revisit those notes.

As synopsized by PSIFF: "Rooted in the reality of the corruption and violence of Buenos Aires, this gritty modern-day noir features Ricardo Darín (The Secret In Their Eyes and The Son Of The Bride) as Hector Sosa who, like the titular vulture-like bird, swoops down on unfortunate victims of Argentina's shockingly commonplace road accidents. Having lost his law license, he is relegated to the role of ambulance chaser for his thuggish employers who profit from a flourishing industry of false claims and insurance scams, fleecing victims of the bulk of any settlement received through their 'foundation.'

"When he meets Luján [Martina Gusmán (Lion's Den)], an overworked medic who is wrestling with her own demons as she tries to save the lives of Sosa's 'clients,' he has a dramatic change of heart, but his plans to escape this life and change his ways go horribly awry. With crisp, tight editing, this lean and suspenseful thriller takes us through accident sites, hospital wards, and seedy interior settings that would be perfectly in place in a Hollywood noir. Carancho is the latest example of director Trapero's trademark socially realistic cinema."

Carancho explores the notion that "behind every tragedy, there is an industry." As Diana Sanchez detailed in her program notes for Carancho's North American premiere at TIFF 2010, Trapero's film is "a story drawn from the alarming violence on his country's streets" and "an engrossing love story set among people who trade in sudden tragedy and death." Tracking the film's press notes, Sanchez writes: "Each year, more than eight thousand people are killed on the road and over a hundred thousand are injured. As a result, a disturbingly large part of the Argentine economy revolves around traffic accidents, and a profit stands to be made from the ongoing flow of medical expenses and insurance claims. Trapero's sixth feature plunges into this murky world of opportunism, spotlighting the crooks that swoop in on emergency rooms and accident scenes."

At Twitch, Todd Brown reported from the film's Cannes premiere: "A film that fuses stellar character work and intimate drama with larger thriller and heist moments with a few elements of shocking violence thrown in for good measure, Carancho is a masterful piece of work from writer / director / producer / editor Pablo Trapero. Trapero serves notice here that he is one of the very best film makers in the world today. Period. The complexity of his characters, the technical quality of the film work, his ability to balance intimate emotion with realistic and brutal action sequences, his obvious skill in working with actors—though that is made easier when you have actors the caliber of [Ricardo] Darín to work with—Trapero is at the highest level in all of these. Flawless? Carancho comes pretty damn close." As if to cinch the deal, Brown has included Carancho in his year-end top picks, emphasizing that "Ricardo Darín anchors Pablo Trapero's Carancho with a riveting, complex performance as a broken man slowly unraveling thanks to the tiny moré of conscience he retains. Classic noir in content if not in style, Trapero's film spins its amoral tale of insurance scams and ambulance chasing in as unaffected a style as possible, letting events play out in a cold, almost clinical fashion as his characters stumble inevitably to a bad end. The always stellar Darín has never been better and he's perfectly matched to both director and story."

At MUBI, Daniel Kasman praises Trapero as a steady, sure-handed genre craftsman. Kasman reported from TIFF: "Carancho has the solidity of construction and reliance on conventional character types and story arcs to effectively normalize a highly specific and localized setting. The result, like an early '30s Hollywood entry, is a workman film, one made by a director prodigious enough to pick such a unglamorous setting and proceed to cast it in a reliably realistic and unappealing light—'cause that's the way it really is. ...The film is so solid that any room for ambiguity is left out of the digital masonry of the mise-en-scène, which builds a clear schema where, simply, anyone involved in the nocturnal world of deaths and near-deaths, accidents and 'incidents' is implicated in the gloom, no questions asked. Thus the modest ambitions of a genre film stay within its modest limits, rather than escaping into the unease of the shadows, blossoming within gray shades of morality, or aesthetically expanded in risky angles, lighting, and other stylistics."

Cross-published on Twitch.

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Argentine Cinema, Daniel Kasman, Diana Sanchez, Latin American Cinema, Martina Gusmán, Pablo Trapero, PSIFF 2011, Ricardo Darín, TIFF10, Todd Brown,

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TIFF 2010 / AFI FEST 2010: CARANCHO—The Evening Class Interview With Pablo Trapero

Pablo Trapero was born in San Justo, Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1971. He wrote, directed and edited the short films Mocoso Malcriado (1993) and Negocios (1995) before directing his feature debut, the award-winning Crane World (1999), a black and white 16mm film that proved to be a breaking point in Argentine cinema and that encouraged dozens of young directors into their first features. Crane World was released internationally at Venice, harvesting awards and critical acclaim at film festivals around the world.

In 2002, his second feature El Bonaerense premiered at Un Certain Regard in the Cannes Film Festival, again to critical and audience acclaim. That same year he opened his own production company Matanza Cine in Buenos Aires, from which he has produced ever since not only his own features but also those of other Argentine and Latin American filmmakers, including Lisandro Alonso, Enrique Bellande and Raúl Perrone. "Matanza", Trapero informed me, is the name of the neighborhood where he was born and raised and literally means "the killing." El Bonoaerense was filmed there, as were several sequences for Carancho (2010), Trapero's sixth feature and Argentina's official submission to the Foreign Language category of the 2011 Academy Awards®. It's been picked up for North American distribution by Strand Releasing.

As a director, between shorts and TV films, his credits include Rolling Family (2004), Born and Bred (2006), and Lion's Den (2008). Carancho explores the notion that "behind every tragedy, there is an industry." As Diana Sanchez detailed in her program notes for Carancho's North American premiere at TIFF 2010, Trapero's film is "a story drawn from the alarming violence on his country's streets" and "an engrossing love story set among people who trade in sudden tragedy and death." Tracking the film's press notes, Sanchez writes: "Each year, more than eight thousand people are killed on the road and over a hundred thousand are injured. As a result, a disturbingly large part of the Argentine economy revolves around traffic accidents, and a profit stands to be made from the ongoing flow of medical expenses and insurance claims. Trapero's sixth feature plunges into this murky world of opportunism, spotlighting the crooks that swoop in on emergency rooms and accident scenes."

At Twitch, Todd Brown reported from the film's Cannes premiere: "A film that fuses stellar character work and intimate drama with larger thriller and heist moments with a few elements of shocking violence thrown in for good measure, Carancho is a masterful piece of work from writer / director / producer / editor Pablo Trapero. Trapero serves notice here that he is one of the very best film makers in the world today. Period. The complexity of his characters, the technical quality of the film work, his ability to balance intimate emotion with realistic and brutal action sequences, his obvious skill in working with actors—though that is made easier when you have actors the caliber of [Ricardo] Darín to work with—Trapero is at the highest level in all of these. Flawless? Carancho comes pretty damn close."

At MUBI, Daniel Kasman praises Trapero as a steady, sure-handed genre craftsman. Kasman reports from the film's North American premiere at Toronto: "Carancho has the solidity of construction and reliance on conventional character types and story arcs to effectively normalize a highly specific and localized setting. The result, like an early 30s Hollywood entry, is a workman film, one made by a director prodigious enough to pick such a unglamorous setting and proceed to cast it in a reliably realistic and unappealing light—'cause that's the way it really is. ...The film is so solid that any room for ambiguity is left out of the digital masonry of the mise-en-scène, which builds a clear schema where, simply, anyone involved in the nocturnal world of deaths and near-deaths, accidents and 'incidents' is implicated in the gloom, no questions asked. Thus the modest ambitions of a genre film stay within its modest limits, rather than escaping into the unease of the shadows, blossoming within gray shades of morality, or aesthetically expanded in risky angles, lighting, and other stylistics."

My thanks to Marcus Hu of Strand Releasing for setting me up to interview Pablo Trapero at the Toronto International and to Doug Cummings for publishing the transcript of our conversation on his AFI Fest website [here] in conjunction with the film's screening this evening at the Mann Chinese 6 Theatre in Hollywood.

Cross-published on Twitch.

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" Ricardo Darín, AFI10, Argentine Cinema, Daniel Kasman, Diana Sanchez, Latin American Cinema, Pablo Trapero, Strand Releasing, TIFF10, Todd Brown,

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