TETRO

I don't normally have contributors to my blog, but I thought that this post would be a good one to start with; it's written by my lovely wife).

"The other night, thanks to the generous help of my sister-n-law and a friend to babysit, we had the chance to go to cinema! What a luxury!

The film that we went to see was Tetro, Francis Ford Coppola's newest film shot in Argentina. The script is simple, it features two Argentine/Italian brothers who reconnect in Buenos Aires to explore their family's dark history. The film is definitely Coppola's best in a long time and the first script he has written himself since The Conversation. Though it's a family drama, it's chock full of suspense, humor, and " artsy" scenes (or memories) of the past. As one reviewer wrote about this new film "It's taken over 30 years for Coppola to discover what kind of films he should be making, art films."

And the acting is solid. It's star, Vincent Gallo (Buffalo 66 & The Brown Bunny) is perfect in portraying the tortured soul of his character, Tetro. 18 year old Alden Ehrenreich, makes a really convincing debut as well and Maribel Verdu (Y Tu Mama Tambien), as always, was fantastic. It was a nice surprise to see so many Argentine actors as well. They represented well, De la Serna (The Motorcycle Diaries) and Bredice (9 Queens) were very funny, Susanna Gimenez (Argentina's answer to Oprah) was herself (thankfully), but my favorite by far was Mike Amigorena (Los Pells), he's hilarious!

Now it's entirely possible that you won't like the story or actors, but we're sure that you'll agree that the film's strongest asset is the cinematography. It was great to see such beautiful shots of Argentina! We've long ago noticed that Argentine cinema (in general does a pretty bad job of shooting exterior shots and lose the opportunity to show how beautiful the country is. Our favorites shots were one of the Obelisco (Argentina's cousin to the Washington Monument) and others of glaciers in the Patagonia. It seems to us, Coppola did a good job in portraying Argentina and the Argentineans without too many stereotyping them too much.

By no means do we think that everything about this film works, but overall it's entertaining and a film we recommend seeing. "