la ventana (2008)

Directed by: Carlos Sorin | 85 minutes | drama | Actors: María del Carmen Jiménez, Antonio Larreta, Alberto Ledesma, Emilse Roldán, Roberto Rovira, Jorge Díez, Carla Peterson, Luis Luque, Arturo Goetz, Marina Glezer, Noemí Frenkel

With his ‘Historias mínimas’ and ‘Bombón: El Perro’ Carlos Sorín has already set the tone for his contemporary work. That includes ‘La ventana’; small stories, minimal narrative and ditto dialogue. But beautiful poetic camera work, dreamy shots, almost surreal close-ups and – although not always much – beautiful, subdued musical support. But where the first two films mentioned still had a handful of characters, each with their own storyline, Sorín seems to literally want to limit himself to the minimum in ‘La ventana’. One story, one location, one day.

‘Don’ Antonio seems aware of his approaching end on this beautiful day and therefore wants to make the most of the last hours that remain. For a man of a respectable age, that’s no big deal anymore. Antonio wants to experience the little pleasures of life one last time: an open window, the beautiful view from his stately mansion, one last walk through the Patagonian fields and one last pee in the open air. The other characters are just passing extras in this dreamy setting. However, they occasionally raise questions that remain unanswered until the very end. Do they mean anything at all? It doesn’t seem to matter.

Their no more than supporting roles (literally and figuratively) make the characters a bit cliché; from the submissive nurses, the simple helper Alberto to the raised and empty son Pablo and his even more superficial girlfriend (wife?) Claudia. The latter two clearly embody the cold, impersonal urban life, in stark contrast to the warmest expressed from the rest of the characters. Sorín often mentions these contradictions in his work, and says he prefers to stay in his parental home, somewhere deep in the south of Argentina, far away from all the urban misery. Perhaps his own anti-urban sentiment is a bit over the top, leaving Pablo and Claudia to be nothing more than two complete parodies of themselves. All this in itself does little to detract from the moving role of Antonio, who is played by the Uruguayan writer, theater maker and actor Antonio Larreta. Larreta, also 86 herself, portrays an extremely modest but very moving Antonio and, in his light blue pajamas, manages to carry the entire film.

The director himself calls his ‘La ventana’ a film ‘like a magnifying glass’. And indeed, the smallest details are ripped off, literally at times, by a sudden close-up of a toy soldier or a wasp that can’t find its way out. But also in a metaphorical sense, Sorín manages to let his minimalist style penetrate to the viewer, so that one does not wait for important plot twists, but can go along with the subtle images. However, a magnifying glass should not become a microscope; Sorín cannot and should not make his films much more minimal.