Kékszakállú

Some directors,like Ruben Ostlund, like to hold their shots for an eternity, letting all the action happen within the frame. The Argentinian director Gaston Solnicki seems to like to alternate between long held shots in which nothing seems to be happening within the frame, and more rapid cutting where shots are not held long enough for us to get a handle on either the characters or even on what we are meant to be watching. You might even say his film "Kekszakallu" isn't 'about' anything but simply an observation of young Argentinians, and in particular some young women, passing time swimming, talking, eating, studying, working and listening to music, primarily Bela Bartok, and about 15 minutes of inactivity passes before the credits come on.

At this point something like a narrative seems to take hold, yet even then the sense that you are watching a documentary on day-to-day living in Buenos Aires never really goes away. The film won the FIPRESCI prize in Venice where an art-house audience no doubt embraced it with open arms and if you are not given to this sort of thing it is, at least, rather short (72 minutes). I, on the other hand, found it both beautiful and strangely calming even if I wasn't always sure what exactly was happening.