El Día que me amen (WHEN SOMEBODY LOVES ME) is an important film from Argentina that bravely examines the spectrum of the effects of 'abandonment' in childhood and how that seemingly minor act can transform lives. Based on a story idea by lead actor Adrián Suar and written for the screen by Marcos Carnevale and Marcela Guerty, this powerful movie steps beyond conventional tales of the distancing of childhood friends and moves into the arena of mental dysfunction and the long road to healing.
Joaquín (Adrián Suar) and Mara (Leticia Brédice) are first seen as early 30s young adults, though their intimate childhood companionship is sensitively shown in flashbacks that appear like old home movies. Mara is an actress who has been traveling the world searching for a career and finally returns to Argentina for a chance to appear in a musical production of 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame'. Mara is beautiful, talented, but a bit emotionally blurred, having left her fiancé in Spain just before their wedding. While her return is strained at first (she is forced to break in to her own home because her mother forgot she was arriving!), her mother Elvira (María Rosa Fugazot) and friends are happy she has returned after an 8-year absence.
Mara is eager to see her childhood friend Joaquín who lives nearby, but there is a strange ambiance about his household: Joaquín has not left his room for two years, living in near silence in the dark, an obviously damaged young man. His father Ignacio (Juan Leyrado) is compassionate but feels Joaquín should be admitted to a psychiatric clinic. Joaquín pleads to stay at home and Ignacio agrees as long as his therapist doctor Balbis (Jorge Marrale) visits him daily.
When Mara first sees Joaquín she is visibly disturbed, senses his problems, and begins to urge him out of his self-confinement. Slowly the two friends reveal each other's etiologies for maladjustment to life: Joaquín never recovered being abandoned first by his ill mother and second by Mara's abrupt leaving Argentina for her career, and Mara still is wounded by being abandoned by her father as a child and her failure to form lasting bonds with men. By opening memories and ultimately places outside Joaquín's house where they shared the intense bonding of their childhood each begins to heal: Mara has a successful evening as the star of her musical and regains her wounded self respect and Joaquín (with the incredibly fine help of therapist Balbis) shows he is shedding his pain of abandonment and growing toward a normal existence - these two factors set the stage for the film's conclusion.
Director Daniel Barone takes this fragile tale and molds it into one of the more tender and touching films about the impact of childhood's 'tragedies' that has been stated to date. The cinematography by Guillermo Zappino never forgets for a moment the dark tones underlying the lives of each of the characters. But the film would never have been so exacting and splendid were it not for the powerful performances by Adrián Suar and the extraordinarily beautiful and gifted Leticia Brédice ('Nine Queens', 'Burnt Money', 'Ashes from Paradise' etc). The supporting cast is equally and homogeneously outstanding. This is one of those films that lingers in the mind, seeking stimuli for remembering our own demons of childhood, long after the credits are over. In Spanish with English subtitles, 110 minutes. Very Highly Recommended.
Grady Harp
