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Ana y los Otros Reviews

2003
1 hr 20 mins
NR

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Ana (Camila Toker) has been living in Buenos Aires for several years when she decides to return home to the seaside city of Paraná. She wanders about town, seemingly aimlessly. She goes to the beach and sunbathes. She runs into an old friend from high school, Diego (Ignacio Uslenghi), who has lost a lot of weight. She stays with another high-school friend, Natalia (Natacha Massera), who is now married with a little girl. She casually asks after her old boyfriend, Mariano, but it soon begins to seem that finding him was her main reason for returning to Paraná. No one's seen Mariano. Rumor has it, he set out for Victoria, either looking for a job, or an ex-girlfriend. After a reunion at Natalia's house, Diego confesses that he and Mariano had a falling out because Diego also had romantic feelings for Ana. After this discussion, Ana avoids Diego's calls. She goes to Mariano's apartment and waits outside, where she meets a boy, Matías (Juan Cruz Díaz la Barba). Matías goes with Ana to Victoria, where he helps her try to track Mariano down. On a stakeout waiting for Mariano, Ana tries to help Diego find a way to approach a girl he likes. Ana and the Others was written and directed by Celina Murga. The film won awards at several festivals and was shown by the Film Society of Lincoln Center in 2004 as part of their Latinbeat Film Series.

Reviewed By: Josh Ralske

A low-key, winsomely comic drama in the spirit of Eric Rohmer, Celina Murga's Ana and the Others evokes an underlying sense of loss that renders it surprisingly poignant, despite Murga's failure to bring this film to an emotionally satisfying conclusion (or lack of interest thereof). The tone of the film is scrupulously naturalistic, and Camila Toker's subtle performance in the title role lends the film a loose-limbed charm. Murga certainly has a feel for the casual interaction of these old friends, though the film doesn't fully come to life until the last third, when Ana befriends Matías (Juan Cruz Díaz la Barba), a hilariously keen-eyed and plainspoken young boy. Their extended encounter, as she repays him for his assistance in tracking down her ex with an abortive attempt to teach him courtliness, is unquestionably the high point of the film. Every exchange between them is sweet, funny perfection in its tender honesty. Murga also captures the sensation of returning home to find that things are not at all how you remembered them. This gets at the aforementioned sense of loss, because while there's nothing explicitly mentioned about it (the closest is when Matías struggles to comprehend a newspaper article about the banking industry), the film subtly alludes to Argentina's economic disaster, as its smart young characters wander, seemingly aimless, desperate for a past that can never be recovered and trying to find a place for themselves in a future that is not at all what they had imagined it would be.