Abrir puertas y ventanas (2011)

Directed by: Milagros Mumenthaler | 96 minutes | drama, comedy | Actors: María Canale, Martina Juncadella, Ailín Salas, Julián Tello

Director Milagros Mumenthaler presents us with a somewhat strange Argentine film, which has great difficulty in keeping the balance between a film without a narrative, or its more clichéd variant. It seems as if the Mumenthaler, who also acts as a screenwriter, lost confidence halfway through the film and therefore wanted to introduce an unnecessary story.

Until that moment, ‘Abrir puertas y ventanas’ is a more than successful film about three sisters growing up (Maria Canale, Martina Juncadella and Ailan Salas) who have to manage in a house after the death of their grandmother. Many questions are left unanswered, nor does there seem to be much progress, but with a nice calmness (and moving cameras; the secret of good movies) and a lot of patience, the Argentinian offers us a portrait – through several moments in the household showed us a life – a still life rush, which works well until halfway through the film.

Then Mumenthaler throws this principle overboard and the portrait has to make way for dramatic developments. And that’s where the movie falters. It is the inability to make a clear choice. Either he makes a still life, or he makes a drama (or he deliberately chooses to balance in the middle), but by changing the option halfway through the film, ‘Abrir puertas y ventanas’ falls apart like loose sand. The drama comes out of nowhere, is poorly substantiated and therefore seems unbelievable. That’s a shame, because the film didn’t need any further plot input at all, but the Argentine director and screenwriter seems to have lacked guts.

It is probably the strong first half that gave the film its awards at the Locarno Film Festival in 2011; if the Argentine film had kept its pensive character from roughly that first fifteen minutes, much more would have been possible.