The latest film by Martin Rejtman reaffirms his singular place in Argentine and world cinema as one of the rare non-mainstream auteurs working today, with brio and invention, in the realm of comedy. Beginning with Rapado (1992), each of Rejtman’s fiction films have brought new formal complexity and philosophical depth to that broad and often dismissed genre through wryly detached, yet richly humorous, stories centred on haplessly charming heroes trying in vain to recover something unexpectedly lost—be it an object, a relationship, youth, or even identity itself. The Practice goes further by using its narrative of a yoga instructor, Gustavo (Esteban Bigliardi), re-evaluating his life while navigating a divorce and torn meniscus, to offer both a comic portrait of late-mid-life crisis and a self-reflexive distillation of Rejtman’s deadpan style and offbeat approach to narrative.
Indeed, Rejtman’s humorously refracted focus upon yoga’s sustained physical and mental routine could
