Leonera (2008)

Directed by: Pablo Trapero | 113 minutes | drama | Actors: Martina Gusman, Elli Medeiros, Rodrigo Santoro, Laura Garcia, Tomás Plotinsky, Leonardo Sauma

Argentine director Pablo Trapero won a number of awards early in his career. Long play debut ‘Mundo Grúa’ won in Rotterdam, Havana and Toulouse, among others, and later films such as ‘Nacido y Criado’ and the road movie ‘Familia Rodante’ were awarded worldwide. Yet the latter film was teeming with genre clichés and never managed to pull the viewer along. With Trapero’s fifth feature film, ‘Leonera’, we end up in a subgenre where the danger of clichés is already lurking: the prison film. Fortunately, the Argentinian manages well.

The power of ‘Leonora’ is in large part due to the formidable actress Martina Gusmán. As the imprisoned Julia Zárate, she depicts the transformation from a rudderless student into a hardened, responsible mother. This transformation goes through several stages, each of which must have been emotionally draining for the actress: the despair of pregnancy, the misery in solitary confinement, the fumbling of an inexperienced mother to silence a screaming child. Seemingly effortless, Gusmán makes it through, and that alone is reason enough to see the film.

Another reason is the way Trapero handles the inevitable clichés. They all come across here, from shower fights to lesbian cops, but they don’t always come across as worn out. While in most prison films aggression and horniness are blind forces with which prisoners and staff are possessed to an extreme extent, Trapero seeks a more human angle. Violence arises from boredom and irritation, whining from the need for warmth and support. The authentic image that this creates is reinforced by the choice of a prison where both mothers and children reside and by the nuanced way in which prison staff are portrayed.

Unfortunately, not everything worked out equally well. Sequences that should give the story a little more momentum, such as Julia’s leave and the prisoner revolt, are at the expense of credibility. Also, some sequences are on the long side, while others don’t really matter. But despite those minuses, ‘Leonera’ fascinates from the first to the last minute. Thanks to Martina Gusmán and the wonderfully bouncing opening credits.