Juan Manuel Tenuta Movies

Writer-helmer Daniela Goggi's initial directorial outing, the minimalist drama Visperas (AKA Eves, 2006) unfolds, exclusively, in the tight, claustrophobic world of Monica, a recent divorcee. Plagued by her newfound social isolation, and haunted by the fear of a pending medical diagnosis, she refuses to tell her immediate family of the news that her physician's office might deliver at any moment, especially in the face of a family birthday party that lies right around the corner. Her reasons are manifold - from a lack of courage to an absence of patience - but in the end, the silence begins to tear her apart inside. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi

This Argentine homage to Hollywood of the '40s focuses on bored Patagonian housewife, Letty (Assumpta Serna), married to older Tomas (Jorge Rivera Lopez), a doctor in an Argentina seaside community. The year is 1947, and Letty spends much time at the local cinema watching American films. Then one day she meets a handsome German, Gunther (Francois-Eric Gendron), suspected by Letty and others of being a fugitive Nazi spy. Her secrets and fantasies related to Gunther eventually backfire as both police and her husband become curious about her activities. Shown at the 1997 Toronto Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, Rovi

In this slapstick comedy, four guys with no background in crime decide that they need money badly enough that they want to try and rob the bank in their small town. They go ahead with their plan and get the loot, escaping in a perfectly functional getaway car. However, when they get stuck in the traffic behind a funeral procession, it begins to look as though the police will nab them for sure, so they ditch the car and hotfoot it across the countryside. As the town learns of the robbery and hears that the culprits have not yet been captured, various people decide that it's time to try some things they'd been thinking about doing and blame the resulting disruption on the missing robbers, while some of the town's younger citizens decide they want to get into the cops 'n robbers business. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Rather than presenting a traditional beginning, middle, and end to a story involving events that lead to a conclusion, this film, set in the 1930s in Buenos Aires, is more of a single character study of a man who is almost perpetually caught somewhere between rage and irritation. He interacts with those lower than himself (a servant-type in his rundown estate) and those just different than himself (an actress), and others he has shared a part of his life with (school friends) -- yet these interactions are still colored by his recurring anger and indignation. No clear reason is shown for his extreme malaise, it is merely a subject of exposition from several angles. The man was based on the lead figure in Dostoyevsky's short story, "Notes from the Underground," in which that "underground man" was reclusive and a misanthrope, though there were political nuances to his behavior that are missing in this movie. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi