Lucio, a published novelist and professor of literature has just been bested in competition for a position at the University of Buenos Aires. He is also in the process of separating from his wife Mariela. He accepts a position as substitute teacher in a high school in the neighborhood of Isla Maciel, where his father, nicknamed El Chileno (The Chilean) is an activist that has struggled for years to improve the quality of life in the neighborhood sometimes helped, sometimes hindered by local politicians. El Chileno is known to everybody in the neighborhood and is making the last preparatives to open a soup kitchen. Lucio is also escaping the Buenos Aires intellectual world of literary presentations, lofty pretensions and shifting fashions. In addition Lucio and Mariela contend with the coming of age of their adolescent daughter Sol, unsure of her plans for the future.
Isla Maciel (Maciel Island) is a neighborhood near the mouth of the Riachuelo (a tributary of the River Plate) near Dock Sud, the southern end of Buenos Aires harbor. It is a working class neighborhood. There is some substandard housing, but most people live in adequate, if modest houses and hold jobs, Crime is a problem, including drug use. Lucio's students behave like teenagers everywhere, are articulate (an Argentinian trait) and some have the project of continuing their education (in Argentina, state universities are entirely tuition free). Lucio finds himself in his new job; he has an easy relationship with his students and finds ways to connect literary subjects and definitions (poetry, paradoxes, mystery tales) with student's experiences.
The plot centers on Dilan, one of Lucio's students, that helps El Chileno in he soup kitchen project. Entangled against his will in the disputes that devastate the neighborhood, Dilan is in the crosshairs of a local drug lord. He must flee and Lucio is his only hope. But this is not the only interest of he film. What makes it so good is that it brings to life everything that it shows; we seem to be watching people, not their movie reflections. Production vales are high and acting is excellent, not only from the leads (Juan Minujín as Lucio, Alfredo Castro as El Chileno, Bárbara Lennie as Mariela) but from the whole cast, many of which are not professional actors. Not to miss.
