Leandro Regunaga Movies

Argentina's own Eva Peron gets an Argentine film biography in this production. For a woman who conducted her life with the bold strokes of grand opera, this effort to depict her human dimension rather than her mythical qualities might not have won her personal approval, but it offers a useful counterpoint to the musical play Evita by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, which was filmed at about the same time as this movie. Eva Peron was the beautiful illegitimate daughter of a rural landlord and a seamstress. She ran away to Buenos Aires when she was 15 with the help of her lover, a traveling singer. Once in the Argentine capital, she did everything in her power to become a prominent performer. A woman of tremendous intelligence, courage, cunning and guile, she reportedly lacked certain essential assets necessary for stage stardom such as native acting talent. However, her good looks and indomitable will took her a long way toward her goal. Then, in 1944, she met Juan Peron, an army officer on the rise in the Argentine government. Together, they formed a winning team, and with her help, Juan Peron became the President of Argentina. It is during Peron's first presidency that Eva strode from the pages of history into the realms of mythology. With an impeccable sense of drama, she combined her untiring and passionate advocacy for the poor with an unbridled contempt for the pretensions of the moneyed classes. Among her lasting and noteworthy accomplishments was winning the right to vote for Argentine women. Then, at the height of her power and influence, she died of uterine cancer. But despite the ravages of the illness, Peron maintained her public image and died with grace and dignity. While there is enough drama in her story to serve as the basis for countless movies, this one is of particular interest because it is by her countrymen. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

The war under consideration in this drama about four young soldiers is the 1982 Falklands War with Great Britain (known in Spanish as the Malvinas War). This issue remains a hot topic in Argentina to the present and is perhaps too hot to handle here in its most controversial aspects. The four young men who are mobilized to go fight in the Falklands all have different interests, ranging from art to money, and different backgrounds that go from the very poor to the upper crust. As their stories are traced from their first day at school until the Argentine defeat in June of 1982, episodes illustrate a society rife with political corruption, terrorism, blind nationalism in some sectors, and media biases. Although the characterization of these youth and their friends is a bit sketchy, it is worth noting that when a civilian government took over in 1983 as a direct result of the military junta's defeat in the Falklands, a film like this could be made for the first time.
~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi