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La Cáscara
The Rind
Uruguay/Spain/Argentina 2007
produced by Diana Frey (executive), Luis Minarro (executive), Mariana Secco (executive) for Salado Media, Delta Producciones, Eddie Saeta
directed by Carlos Ameglio
starring Juan Alari, Martin Voss, Horacio Marassi, Walter Reyno, Filomena Gentile, Virginia Ramos, Paola Venditto, Augusto Mazzarelli, Soledad Gilmet, Gonzalo Cammarota, Virginia Rodríguez, Noelia Campo, María Aiello, Jorge Bolani
written by Carlos Ameglio, music by Gustavo Casenave
review by Mike Haberfelner
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In their advertising company, Pedro (Juan Alari) and Juan (Gonzalo Cammarota)
are the perfect team - Juan is the idea man, and Pedro the one who makes
it all happen. Then though, Juan dies unexpectedly in a carcrash, just
before he could deliver the cracking idea for an ad for an anti-cold drug,
and Pedro, afraid to lose his position in the company and afraid that
someone will find out that Juan was the sole creative force behind all
their team efforts, tries all sorts of things to track down Juan's
allegedly great idea, like talking to all his exes, breaking into his
apartment, living in his apartment, trying to live his life and whatnot -
but to little avail. It's only when Pedro meets a pre-teen orphan, Juanito
(Martin Voss) who was also a friend of Juan's that he tries to get an idea
as to who Juan really was, but then Juanito leads Pedro to the site of
Juan's carcrash and disappears - and it might be because Juanito was
Juan's former self or his spirit, or really just an orphan who likes to
run away. Anyways, this gets Pedro so unhinged that he eventually takes to
the streets at night dressed in a spacesuit, and he is eventually run by a
car over too, wearing it - but that's when he finally has the perfect idea
for the anti cold drug ad ... A film that tries very hard to be
a likeable dark comedy - and it only partly succeeds: On one hand, it's
harmless enough throughout to be liked by pretty much everyone, which also
means though that it lacks any edges to become anything more than
likeable, not even interesting, which is also supported by an
aesthetically neutral direction. On the other hand, the dark elements of
the narrative are very much suppressed until the finale, which is when the
film finally tries to shake it's harmlessness (also direction-wise) - but
by then it's too little too late. Now this one could have been good with a few
macabre touches every now and again, a tighter pace and the running time
trimmed from about 105 minutes to approximately 75 - but as it is, it's
just too long, too uneventful, too boring and indeed to harmless to really
be of much interest.
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