‘Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed’: Cannes Review

Dir: Hernan Rosselli. Argentina/Portugal. 2024. 100mins.

The fallout of working a clandestine playing enterprise on a Buenos Aires household is explored to driving and intense impact in Hernan Rosselli’s second characteristic, One thing Previous, One thing New, One thing Borrowed. Rosselli’s 2014 debut Mauro additionally explored lives on the prison edge, however this time the canvas is wider, skillfully juggling a documentary-style insider view of murky goings-on, a tough, noirish plotline and a story of a younger girl’s craving for freedom from household. The air of claustrophobia and grunginess stay powerfully in proof, although, in a movie that sweats authenticity from each pore.

 Noir filtered by way of the lens of documentary

The air of actuality is helped by the truth that the movie’s two leads are performed by a pair of non-actors, neighbours of the director. They play Maribel (Maribel Felpeto) and her mom Alejandra (Alejandra Canepa, Maribel’s real-life mom), all of a sudden left in control of a playing enterprise run out of an property within the outskirts of Buenos Aires on the demise of Hugo, their father and husband respectively. A motley crew of tubby, largely loveable rogues are there to assist them out, together with Leandro (Leandro Menendez), who’s having an affair with Maribel. Enterprise is nice and the cellphone by no means stops ringing, however the information {that a} rival household has been raided by the police is casting a shadow over the long run.

This present-day narrative is damaged up by the story of the household’s previous, as revealed within the seemingly infinite residence movies (provided by the actors) made by the good-looking, floppy-haired Hugo (Hugo Felpeto). These are inevitably information of happier instances which additionally chart Alejandra’s life journey, from lovely younger ingenue to the hardnosed businessperson of the current. Hugo’s persevering with affect is intensified by query marks hanging over his demise. When Maribel logs into his Fb web page and finds a photograph of somebody who carefully resembles her father, she begins to suspect she has a half-brother she is aware of nothing about. Accompanied by her pal Juliana (Juliana Inae Risso), Maribel adopts a faux id to research, taking them into the doubtless harmful territory of rival gangs and inflicting fractures inside the household.

If this all sounds noirish, then it’s – however it’s filtered by way of the lens of documentary. (Inevitably some attention-grabbing particulars emerge about life in a bootleg playing ring, equivalent to that the suicide charges of gamblers and bookies alike rises at Christmas, when the wins and losses are greater.) As with Mauro, which was concerning the hidden world of forgers, there’s the sense that Rosselli has frolicked exploring this milieu. The expertise for the viewer is an immersion in each the household and their affairs – an immersion which implies that, at a few factors, plot particulars turn into about as murky because the household’s enterprise dealings.

Within the present-day sequences the hand-held cameras, intimate close-ups and muttered dialogues – apparently inconsequential, however usually loaded – usually really feel like fly-on-the-wall documentary. A lot of what the viewer sees is recorded footage, whether or not it’s from Hugo’s residence movies or from the safety cameras that oversee life on the property and inside the home itself. One tense scene involving Alejandra’s interrogation of a suspected rule-breaker makes sensible use of the conference, which brings a jittery, paranoid air to the entire movie. For apparent causes that is an remoted and lonely household with lives that really feel below steady surveillance, and it’s from this oppressive ambiance that Maribel, within the movie’s second half, appears to be cannily planning her escape.  

The movie makes use of Alejandra’s clumsy makes an attempt to play Bach on a house keyboard as a sort of soundtrack to nice impact. In a movie the place conversations are guarded and truths suppressed, it falls to the music to produce the emotion.