Summary
Achieved and at times moving fable of a family reunion based on an extraordinary situation that affects one of its members, where the irruption of the fantastic will be an opportunity for change for all its members.
Review
Ágatha (Lide Uranga) lives with her almost forty-year-old son Leónidas (Cristian Jensen) in a coastal town in the province of Buenos Aires (probably Claromecó). On the occasion of celebrating her 74th birthday, Ágata undergoes an unusual transformation. To face the new situation Leónidas calls his sister Eli (Antonella Saldicco), who will return after having left the family home a long time ago.
Since all the reviews spoil her, I must reveal that the transformation consists of Ágatha suddenly and physically transforming into an 8-year-old girl (Matilde Creimer Chiabrando); but she is still the Agatha of 74.
The Ágatha turned girl gives rise to ironic or absurd situations, some disturbing or moving others, with a certain humor that nevertheless never falls into the obviously comic. Leonidas works, but is quite subdued by his mother, to the point of having relegated aspects of his personal life that he expresses in significant collages, while we see him practice a strange language. On the other hand, the mother always watches a strange guru of personal fulfillment and healing on TV.
It will be the irruption of the pragmatic Elisa (in a great work by Antonella Saldicco), the daughter who escaped the dominating and castrating influence of her mother, the one who redefines the board of that family that attends that period of life in which, precisely , the elderly recover attitudes from childhood.
The director Sol Berruezo Pichon-Riviére gives a melancholic and calm tone, although at times moving, to a large part of the story. She achieves effective changes of climate and rhythm through skillful use of the soundtrack. On the other hand, she resorts to a creative irruption of collage and other disruptive elements in montage.
This family reunion in extraordinary situations is a fable in which the irruption of the fantastic offers an opportunity for change also for the brothers and where the advice of the guru "I'm sorry, forgive me, thank you, I love you" will take on all its moving meaning.
