Latin American series links empty pockets with empty lives
About midway through the gentle and bracing ''Lili's Apron," things really begin to fall apart for the couple at the film's center. Lili and her husband, Ramón, live in Buenos Aires, and they are slowly slipping from solvent to broke.
He has lost his job as a chef -- the modest restaurant he worked at has switched over to canned food -- street thugs have stolen his shopping cart enterprise selling homemade pork sausages, and eviction is close at hand. Lili, meanwhile, has spent their last 800 pesos (about $300) on a living-room-full of Tupperware-style containers (they're called Clappers) in hopes of making a fresh start hosting Clappers parties.
Lili, played by Paula Ituriza, leaves town with their two children to escape the stress. That leaves Ramón (Luis Ziembrowski) free to take desperate action: He puts on mascara, wig, and a boxy dress and pretends he's Lili for a new job as a live-in maid.
''Lili's Apron," though, has none of the slapstick of ''Mrs. Doubtfire," the comedy that had Robin Williams in a dress and a wig. It hovers, instead, in that darkly sardonic zone between Ramón's disbelief and his resignation. His goal is modest: He just wants to love his wife and hold on.
Released in 2004 and directed by Mariano Galperin, ''Lili's Apron" is one of five films that make up the ''Contemporary Latin American Cinema" series at the Museum of Fine Arts, running today through April 17.
Also set in Buenos Aires is ''Today and Tomorrow," a day in the life of a young, experimental-theater actress, Paula (Antonella Costa). Like ''Lili's Apron," this Argentinean film shines a spotlight on the economic anxieties of the country, also centering on the moment when the checking account is overdrawn and the rent is long overdue. What's left to sell?
Paula tries to avoid the inevitable answer -- her body -- saying no to a cash-for-sex offer from her director. But, stuck, she ends up taking her first foray into prostitution. ''A character, only a character," she whispers to herself as she nervously puts on makeup for the night. A deeply dispirited prostitute, she has some good luck (one kind, handsome client) and some rotten luck (a robbery, an assault) and faces the dawn empty and alone.
''Today and Tomorrow" was directed by Alejandro Chomski, and the film's occasional quick-cut editing captures its heroine's increasingly edgy apprehension. Born in Argentina in 1968, Chomski went on to get his master's degree at the American Film Institute. He will be at the March 17 screening of the film.
Rodrigo Bellott's disturbing ''Sexual Dependency" (2003) has a documentary-style feel. Using a split screen for overlapping dialogue or to show the same moment from literally different angles, it presents five distinct and interwoven stories of teenagers in the Bolivian city of Santa Cruz and on a US college campus. Each of the vignettes has the characters enduring sexual experiences that are uniformly unhappy -- set pieces that are both common and shocking.
''Whisky," on the other hand, is a deadpan and melancholic slip of a film, and winner of the Prix du Regard Original at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. Jacobo (Andres Pazos), a drab and logy man of about 60, runs a drab and logy sock factory in the Buenos Aires area. He's getting ready for the unveiling of his mother's headstone a year after her death, a Jewish tradition, and his more prosperous and settled brother is coming in from Brazil for the event.
Humbled at the thought of facing his brother with so little in his life, Jacobo, with just a few words, asks his assistant at the factory to pose as his wife. Just as nearly wordlessly, Marta (played by Mirella Pascual), agrees. (The film's title comes from a sweet moment when they're getting a portrait taken as part of the ruse; ''a smile now, say 'whiskey'," directs the photographer.) The couple and the brother take a chaste trip to the Uruguayan coastal town of Piriapolis, where they play Air Hockey and listen to a tinny Casio at a karaoke bar, and then they each return to their separate lives. It's a simple story that leaves a gray-warm glow.
The co-directors of ''Whisky," Juan Pablo Rebella and Pablo Stoll, will be at this afternoon's 1:30 p.m. showing. Both men were born in Uruguay, and ''Whisky" is their second feature together. Also on the bill is a short film from Uruguay, ''As Follows," about the family traditions surrounding a boy's bar mitzvah. Both films are co-presented by the Boston Jewish Film Festival.
Most lush in scale is the Chilean ''Loco Fever." Director Andrés Wood had a big hit in Chile last year with ''Machuca," a film about three children during President Salvador Allende's 1970s administration that was Chile's submission for the 2004 best foreign film Oscar. ''Loco Fever," released three years earlier, is less political. Set in a tiny river village in the spectacular, mountainous Patagonia region, the film is partly about second chances and partly about the predictable combustion of greed, cash, and mendacity.
The Loco is an endangered shellfish and a seafood delicacy, and it can be plucked from the water only on certain days a year. A shady character who grew up in the village has returned at Loco season with a wealthy Japanese client (the townspeople call him ''the Chinaman"). The two men offer to outbid the regional buyers and pay a premium price for all the Locos. Their offer is reluctantly accepted --didn't this guy scam them once before? -- and the games begin.
For a few days, the village is awash in cash vouchers, prostitutes, and dreams, and hungers explode. It's like the movie ''Chocolat," when the town in that film goes gooey with lust. The underwater diving scenes are lovely, and a subplot, which has the entire village following a nightly radio drama produced by the parish priest, is wonderful.
Leslie Brokaw can be reached at lesliebrokaw@yahoo.com.
Latin America, today
General admission for the ''Contemporary Latin American Cinema" series at the Museum of Fine Arts is $9; MFA members, seniors, and students pay $8. Members of the Boston Jewish Film Festival pay $8 for the showing of ''Whisky." All films have English subtitles; all are in Spanish. For more information, call 617-369-3306 or go to www.mfa.org/film.
Today
1:30 p.m. ''Whisky" (directors present)
Thursday
6 p.m. ''Loco Fever"
8 p.m. ''Whisky"
Saturday
2:15 p.m. ''Lili's Apron"
4 p.m. ''Loco Fever"
March 13
3:45 p.m. ''Whisky"
March 17
6 p.m. ''Lili's Apron"
8 p.m. ''Today and Tomorrow" (directors present)
March 19
1:45 p.m. ''Today and Tomorrow"
March 24
6 p.m. ''Whisky"
April 15
3 p.m. ''Sexual Dependency"
April 16
3:45 p.m. ''Sexual Dependency"
April 17
3:45 p.m. ''Sexual Dependency"
