- Daniela Speranza’s Rambleras screens at the Chicago Latino Film Festival tomorrow and Saturday.
The English-speaking world remains largely unaware of the low-key, yet highly flavorful humanist filmmaking that’s been flourishing in Uruguay for the past decade or so. This may be because—unlike the cinemas of Romania and South Korea, which have received far more attention in the English-language film world since 2000—Uruguay has yet to produce an internationally celebrated auteur on the level of Cristian Mungiu or Chan-wook Park. (The only real contenders are the team of Pablo Stoll and the late Juan Pablo Rebella, whose Whisky won a prize at Cannes in 2004, and Federico Veiroj, whose A Useful Life was a modest hit on the festival circuit three years back). Yet the national cinema has developed a distinctive sensibility, one that only continues to deepen as more filmmakers contribute to it.
That’s especially true of Solo, as the soft-spoken, middle-aged hero feels most at home within an ensemble. Yet Nelson—like the thwarted protagonists of Gigante (a security guard), Norberto’s Deadline (an unsuccessful real estate agent), and Useful Life (the manager of a poorly attended cinematheque)—dreams of breaking out of his shell. For years he’s been writing his own songs, and the movie centers on his effort to enter one of them in a national songwriting contest. The contest keeps him buoyant even after his wife walks out on him and his mother’s health declines, giving him (like the camaraderie of the air force band) a larger sense of purpose in his lonely life. At the same time, his disappointments loom large over the plot, and the movie takes seriously his struggle to reconcile personal desire with communal responsibility.
Solo
Rambleras
Rambleras‘ plainspoken harmony between stylization and everyday reality marks one of the greatest achievements I’ve yet encountered in 21st-century Uruguayan cinema. I feel happy just thinking about it.
