_¿Qué es el otoño?_ brings together two forces of Argentinean cinema: one of its greatest directors and one of its most highly-regarded actors. If _Breve cielo_ explored youth, this film is David José Kohon's commentary on maturity, which can be just as aimless as that earlier stage.
Portrayed by the immortal Alfredo Alcón, Alejandro Farman is an architect who has seen better days. The recipient of many awards, he is respected ("so respected, I will die a virgin," in his own words), but he cannot find work either because he is too proud or because he is regarded as overqualified. Much of the film deals with his relationship with María Luisa (Dora Baret), a divorced woman, the mother of two boys, who may or may not save the architect from himself. As the title indicates, _¿Qué es el otoño?_ explores the autumn of human life, that is, the stage that comes after the idealism and the often misdirected energy of youth.
Argentina's official submission to the Academy Awards, the film did not receive a nomination. That was the year of _That Obscure Object of Desire_ (Luis Buñuel), _Operation Thunderbolt_ (Menahem Golam), and _Madame Rosa_ (Moshé Mizrahi), which won the award. Back home, in Argentina, it was one of the bloodiest years of the Proceso, and the movie alludes to the social and political unrest. "It's easy to manufacture illusions," Alejandro says after a talk with a few young students of architecture, "but these days those illusions are costing a lot of blood." Look out for the scene involving a Ford Falcon...
Some trivia. Alejandro is a fan of Lewis Carroll's _Through the Looking-Glass_ (1871); this preference gives way to an interesting cinematic device at the end of the film. Other things that may have some interest are a scene shot in the old Italpark, which was closed in 1990, and an eerie nightmare sequence involving a painting by Hieronymus Bosch.
Dedicated to the "Generación del 60," the Argentinean equivalent of the French Nouvelle Vague, _¿Qué es el otoño?_ may be a comment on the director's own career as a filmmaker, but it also expressed the insecurities of an entire generation. Let me end with a quote by one of Alejandro's friends, which illustrates the spirit of the film: "They educated us for a world that never came, and we were left in no man's land with a one-way ticket."
