Patricio Contreras Movies
- 2007
Acclaimed Chilean director Luis R. Vera helms the allegorical period drama Fiestapatria. Set at the outset of Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship in the early 1970s, the film tells a bi-layered story. On the most immediate level, the picture dramatizes the gathering of two families - all but complete strangers to one another - who gather at a rural home to celebrate both the national holidays and the marital engagement of their children, Macarena and Alvaro. All appears well (and a 'happy ending' seems imminent), until Macarena shocks herself by unveiling a dark and nasty secret harbored by Alvaro's family. On the deeper (allegorical) level, this story symbolizes Chile's sociopolitical and moral evolution from the early 70s, with its military dictatorship, to the present day. Moreover, each of the family members emblematizes a recognizable archetype from Chilean society. The film stars Adela Secall, Marcela Oscrio, Nelson Brodt, Patricio Contreras, Daniel Munoz, Tatiana Astengo and Sergio Hernandez. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Adela Secall, Marcela Osorio, (more)
A group of parents who have gathered to debate the sexual education schooling of their fourth grade children are forced to re-examine their own views of sex when three couples all make concerted efforts to reawaken their long-buried sensual side in this erotic, Spanish-language comedy directed by Boris Quercia and starring Sigrid Alegria. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- 2001
Six men escape from an Argentinean prison and meet wildly different fates in this episodic drama. One of the escapees never makes it into the outside world; Belisario Zacarias (Oscar Alegre) gets caught in the tunnel they've dug to make their way out of lockup, and his friend Omar Zajur (Vando Villamil) initially refuses to leave him behind, though he soon joins the group, and pays a call to La Varela (Norma Alendro), Zacarias' girlfriend. Tomas Opitti (Alejandro Awada), the ringleader of the group, was a leftist political activist arrested on false charges, and he sets out to get even with Duval (Patricio Contreras), the official who framed him. Domingo Santalo (Ricardo Darin) is a gambler who soon finds himself in a high-stakes card game with master poker player Victor Gans (Facundo Arana), arranged by mob boss Pedro Escofet (Arturo Maly); Santalo also renews a very dangerous romance with Tabita (Ines Estevez), Escofet's wife. Julio Bordiola (Gerardo Romano) is a luckless loser whose lovely wife Rita (Antonella Costa) is sleeping with Ledeyra (Juan Ponce de Leon); he often wonders just why Rita ever married him, and when he learns the answer, it proves to be more than he can stand. And Laureano Irala (Miguel Angel Sola) has nowhere in particular to go, and when the escapees emerge in the coal shed of an old man named Villalba (Manuel Andres), his wife is so frightened that she drops dead. Villalba was sworn vengeance against the jailbirds, but a sympathetic Irala ends up moving in with him, posing as a long lost relative. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Miguel Ángel Solá, Ricardo Darín, (more)
In this Spanish-language crime thriller, an investigator from Buenos Aires, Argentina receives a summons from a South American businessman to spend several days in his beachside mansion. In mid-visit, the detective suddenly stumbles onto a heinous crime that prompted the entrepreneur's son to commit suicide. With time running out, the investigator must unravel the strands of the father's Machiavellian plot and pull in enough evidence to have the perpetrator arraigned ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Patricio Contreras, Laura Novoa, (more)
- 1996
Telma (Norma Pons) is concerned when her father Salerno dies of a heart attack in a movie theater while watching a film of two thugs beating another man. She believes that there is something more to it, and seeks the help of Deganis (Patricio Contreras), a forensic psychiatrist. Deganis, having found out the names of the two actors doing the beating onscreen, looks one of them up. His name is Walensky (Lito Cruz), and he is looking for Smith (Martin Adjemian), the other actor. Deganis pays him to continue looking, and the actors' pasts begin to be revealed as the story continues. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- 1995
This humanistic melodrama purports to be the first film from Argentina to deal with the effects of AIDS in a straightforward manner as it examines the psychological effects of the disease upon a well-to do heterosexual couple preparing to wed. It is Pablo who is diagnosed HIV-positive. Although he swears he has been faithful to his fiancee, the pregnant Mariana, she is devastated and breaks up with him. She does decide to keep the baby though. Pablo, finds himself increasingly despondent and unable to escape his depression until he discovers photography. His favorite subject becomes plain streets filled with working-class people. Meanwhile Mariana throws herself into her theatrical work, spending most of her time with her students. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1994
This historical drama, set in the '20s examines the strange, brief reign of a Latin American dictator. It was alternately shot in Havana and Mexico. The story is set in an unspecified Latin country and chronicles the daily life of the tyrannical dictator. One of his day's highlights is the signing of execution orders. His insane daughter must be physically restrained and is tied to her bed. Also included in the tale are a group of picked on Spaniards, a psychic woman, and effeminate Spanish ambassador, and a rebellious general. The film contains no violence. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gian Maria Volontè, Ana Belén, (more)
The Spanish/Argentinian Of Love and Shadows (De Amor y Sombras) is a fragmentary adaptation of the Isabel Allende novel of the same name. The scene is Chile, during the dictatorial Pinochet regime of the early 1970s. Journalist Jennifer Connelly, insulated from the truth and enjoying the romantic favors of Army officer Camillo Gallardin, prefers to turn a blind eye to the political turmoil all around her. She changes her attitude abruptly when she falls in love with charismatic self-styled anarchist Antonio Banderas. The grim realities depicted in the Allende novel are soft-pedalled in favor of the Connelly-Banderas love story-which, truth to tell, doesn't play very well on screen. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jennifer Connelly, Antonio Banderas, (more)
- 1992
In the northwest of modern-day Argentina, a new Indian ranch-worker has come to work on a cattle ranch. He left his old home after living through the accidental death of his son which, irrationally, he felt responsible for. At his new place of work, the chief gaucho (foreman or head cowboy) has an illegitimate son who is about the age of the Indian's dead son, and they become friends. This irritates the chief gaucho; even though he refuses to acknowledge the boy as his own or have much to do with him, he's still jealous of his parental rights. Meanwhile, the son of the ranch's owner has come back from studying scientific agriculture in the U.S. He persuades his dad that ranching is a low-profit business and that they should convert the whole spread over to tobacco. This spells hardship for almost everyone involved. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Patricio Contreras, Leonor Manso, (more)
High school math teacher Ramiro Orellana somehow managed to run afoul of the military government in Santiago, and he has been classified as politically unreliable. Rather than go to the expense of locking him up, since he's not considered to be a definite threat to their regime, the rulers have chosen the relatively benevolent course of sentencing him to internal exile. As a result, he is uprooted from his comfortable but friendless city existence, and finds himself in a village which has rebuilt itself after being destroyed by a tidal wave a generation ago. Despite suffering from a campaign of harassment by one of the local officials, Ramiro gradually comes to know the villagers and comes to appreciate the splendid and dangerous qualities of the natural environment. He even has an honest romantic relationship with the daughter of an exiled Spanish republican; while they care for one another, neither one wants to relinquish their autonomy in a marriage. All in all, his exile turns out to be the best thing that has ever happened to him. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Patricio Contreras, Héctor Noguera, (more)
- 1990
After Ramon (Lorenzo Quinteros) loses his job at a factory in Buenos Aires, his life and that of his family goes steadily downhill. At first, he moves them from their nice home to a slum of the city, but when his son gets into trouble for hanging out with drug dealers, he decides to return to his father's home in the country, which is more of a shack than anything. It is inhabited by his father, who is suffering from old-age dementia, and his brother, who is struggling to get by. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Lorenzs Quinteros, Patricio Contreras, (more)
In this historical drama based on Carlos Fuentes' novel, Harriet Winslow (Jane Fonda) is a naive woman who, hoping to broaden her horizons, accepts a job as a governess in Mexico in 1913. However, Harriet unknowingly finds herself thrown into the middle of the Mexican revolution, where she attracts the attentions of two very different men: an elderly American gentleman (Gregory Peck) who has come to Mexico to die, and Tomas Arroyo (Jimmy Smits), a general with Pancho Villa's army of rebels who is fighting for the freedom of his people. The American's attraction to Harriet is more intellectual (though he unmistakably finds her attractive), while Arroyo holds a greater romantic allure to Harriet, who is still a stranger to the ways of love. In time, she gains a new sense of freedom and self-knowledge in Mexico, but while the victories of Villa's forces bring out an unseemly arrogance in Arroyo, Harriet makes a surprising discovery about the Old Gringo -- that he is in fact the fabled author Ambrose Bierce, who vanished years before. Old Gringo was the first American film for director Luis Puenzo, and the next-to-last for star Jane Fonda. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jane Fonda, Gregory Peck, (more)
- 1986
This is a compelling docudrama of a failed attempt to help Geronima (played by Luisa Calcumil), a Mapuche woman in the state of Patagonia in Argentina. Geronima and her four children were managing to survive until a snowstorm killed off their animals. Soon a representative from the Ministry of Health takes the beleaguered family of five to stay at a hospital in a neighboring town. Unfortunately, Geronima is separated from her children at the hospital. The family had no defense against the germs there, and the mother became severely stressed when kept from her children. The result is disastrous. Actual tapes of conversations with the real Geronima in the mid-1970s are played off-screen, and alternate with the re-enactment of her story. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Luisa Calcumil, Mario Luciani, (more)
- 1986
This 1986 film portrays a couple from Argentina who move to New York City for political reasons, but later wish to journey back to their home. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Luis Brandoni, Marta Bianchi, (more)
This is an emotionally gripping, fictional look at a couple torn apart by the infamous Argentine campaign of killings and torture that sent thousands of accused terrorists to unmarked graves in the mid-and late-'70s. Alicia (Norma Aleandro) and Roberto (Hector Alterio) adopted a little girl (Analia Castro) during this period of governmental terror in Argentina. Alicia has always wondered about the parents of their little girl, a topic her husband has forced her into forgetting as a condition of the adoption -- he alone knows the full story. Thanks to censorship, Alicia -- like others -- is not fully aware of how much killing has gone on until her students at school start complaining that their textbook histories were written by murderers. Add to this a long conversation with a friend who had been in exile after she was tortured by the government, and Alicia starts to do some serious political and personal research on her own. The results reveal the identity of the little girl's dead parents and reveal that Alicia's husband has had a nasty hand in the government repression and dirty dealings with foreign businesses. She also learns the identity of the girl's grandmother. Her next decision will determine what to do with this information. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Héctor Alterio, Norma Aleandro, (more)
- 1981
In this film that focuses on the history of Buenos Aires, three separate stories by Manuel Mujica Lainez are presented in sequence, directed by three different men and dealing with three different periods in the history of the city. The first story, "Hunger" (dir. Alberto Fischerman), is set in the mid-16th century when Argentina was being colonized by the Spaniards. In this vignette, the Spanish settlers are surrounded by the Querandi tribe of Indians in the tiny village that was the beginning of Buenos Aires, and they have no means of obtaining food. Hunger becomes the dominant motif that rules all waking moments, and the settlers resort to cannibalism in order to survive. In the next story, "The Bell Bracelet " (dir. Ricardo Wulicher), the time has progressed to the 18th century, but the behavior of the Europeans in the city has not improved. An encampment of English slave-dealers is run by a blind man who has no problem in picking out pleasing slave women to pass the night away. His blindness, in the end, may be the cause of his undoing. The last story, "The Golden Room" (dir. Oscar Barney Finn), takes place at the beginning of the 20th century and involves an acerbic old dowager confined to her bed but not at all ineffectual in dealing with her household. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Eva Franco, Graciela Dufau, (more)
- 1978
Adolfo Aristarian, the stunning Argentinean director and master of the genre film, offers his take on the crime film with La Parte del Leon. Aristarian betrays his encyclopedic knowledge of the genre in the film's dedication, "To Warner Bros., 1930-1950." The film, like all great crime films, has a simple story told in a brilliant manner, with Aristarian pulling out all the stops. Bruno di Toro is a normal kind of guy, with a job, without a girl, and without a lot of money. One day he stumbles onto a cache of cash which, like anyone would, he pockets. With the money, he makes the scene flashing around town and setting up "business" meetings with corrupt government officials and greedy American businessmen. Before his plans can bear fruit, the "owners" of the money, a group of bank robbers, come after him, bringing heat. Bruno tries to run but his fate is already, inescapably, sealed. Like the Warner Bros. crime films of 1947 to 1953 which created social commentary by drawing parallels between crime and capitalism, this film does the same, but between Argentina's military regime and a social Darwinism of the streets. ~ Brian Whitener, All Movie Guide
