Historias Minimas

Historias Minimas (edited by julian reboratti)Directed by Carlos SorinArgentina / Spain 2002

Argentinean filmmaker Carlos Sorin's deadpan and beguiling road-trip drama Intimate Stories makes use of the road itself as a major character. In vignettes of coincidence and cooperation played out between Fitz Roy and the distant port of San Julin, the imposing physical presence of blacktop extends in an endless ribbon over the vast, extraordinary steppes of Southern Patagonia. But while this piquant, tapas-like movie (a 2003 film- festival favorite only now being released) asserts that landscape is a kind of destiny from which one cannot escape, Sorin takes delighted, serious interest in how far a person can advance psychologically, even if all roads lead back to a home at the end of the world.

In a persuasive demonstration of innate human dignity, all but two of the cast members are nonactors who enact their parts with easy naturalism. An old man with a guilty conscience hitches rides in search of his dog; a young provincial woman and her baby journey by bus to claim a prize on a TV game show; a traveling salesman frets about the perfect gift to impress a woman he fancies. Strangers meet, then move on. Paths cross, then unravel. Only the highway itself remains constant in Sorin's sweet, shaggy travelogue.

Intimate Stories

A film review by Nicholas Schager - Copyright 2005 Filmcritic.com

Carlos Sorins Intimate Stories could just as easily have been titled Destination: San Julin, as its three unrelated Argentinean characters all embark on a trip from their rural Southern Patagonia town of Fitz Roy to the provincial capital searching for celebrity, romance, and a chance at atonement for past sins. A film of gentle humanism that delivers equal doses of repentant solemnity and comical lightheartedness, Sorins cinematic road-trip its uplifting spirit unsullied by cheap, cloying sentimentality has an ambulatory pace and a cautious optimism thats as easygoing as it is poignant. Divided into three separate narratives that occasionally intersect out on the countrys vast, barren two-lane highways, its a compassionate portrait of lonely people who, driven by desperation and determination, resolve to take a risky, potentially heartbreaking chance on a better life.

Mara (Javiera Bravo), a new mother who religiously sends applications to her favorite game shows, is selected to appear on Multicolored Casino, a gaudy, amateurish program that films live every day in San Julin, and journeys with baby boy in tow to the TV studio for her one shot at self-esteem-boosting stardom. Don Justo (Antonio Benedicti), the aging owner of a roadside supermarket forced to endure his patronizing son and daughter-in-law who call him crazy behind his back and cut his food for him straps on his new hiking boots for the 200-mile trek to San Julin after learning that his beloved runaway dog Badface has been seen there. Meanwhile Roberto (Javier Lombardo), a cagey salesman peddling fat-reducing topical paste, endeavors to deliver a birthday cake to Rene, the child of a lovely San Julin client he urgently plans to woo. Convinced that happiness, contentment, and salvation await them at the end of their expeditions, each sets forth on his or her own mini-odyssey, along the way meeting a variety of strangers while discovering that, though dreams can be fragile and illusory, kindness, and selflessness are commodities in plentiful supply for those open to receiving them.

Unfolding with casual delicacy, Intimate Stories (written by Pablo Solarz) feels like a campfire yarn bereft of the giant, climactic payoff, instead maintaining a relaxed, almost demure tone of destiny-touched hopefulness. Sorins direction is polished but unfussy, lending a believability to his tales incidents of happenstance, and his informal mise-en-scne is aided by his cast of professional and non-professional actors. Every one of Sorins performers brings an affecting naturalism to the film, from Bravos silent, beaming smile when Mara wins the coveted multiprocessor prize on national TV, to Robertos frustrated destruction of Renes birthday cake after he spies the object of his affection with another man. The films stirring emotional center, however, is the understated Benedicti. As the despondent Don Justo an obstinate elderly man who believes Badface deliberately deserted him for a crime he committed years earlier the 80-year-old first-time actor exudes shame and remorse through minimal gestures (a corner-of-the-mouth grin, opening his eyes slightly wider than normal) while conveying the onerous burden of his characters guilt via his scrunched, stooped posture. And though Sorins portrait of the aged traveler can sometimes be too precious for its own good, the director nonetheless finds poetry in the simple, low-key image of Don Justo mischievously wiggling his ears for a group of giggling, delighted children