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REVIEW: EL BONARENSE
Directed by Pablo Trapero
Review by Michael Rowin
a Film Comment online exclusive
A subtle, melancholy investigation of working-class hardship and police corruption, Pablo Trapero's El Bonaerense reaches into the grey areas of life in a decaying urban center. Calling to mind the poetic realism and unassuming existentialism of TV's Homicide: Life on the Streets, the film's distinctly Argentine flavor is rooted in the country's recent political and economic crisis. Like Homicide, El Bonaerense (slang for "the police" as well as "provincial") has an absorbing rhythm and edgy handheld camerawork but it is decidedly detached in tone, particularly when it comes to its not-quite lovable protagonist. Trapero is more interested in following his character within an unstable, threatening environment, his experiences captured less through dialogue than atmosphere and setting. In only his second feature Trapero shows the command of a director who respects his characters and story enough to not resort to manipulation and clear-cut narrative solutions. The result is a film of quiet urgency.
The plot is deceptively simple: Zapa (Jorge Román), a none-to-bright small town locksmith, nonchalantly goes along with a safe-cracking scheme, finds himself first arrested, then bailed by his uncle, a retired policeman, who sets him up with a job in the Buenos Aires police department. Trapero follows Zapa's gradual progress-and moral digression-from lowly guard, witnessing quickly-dismissed misuses of power, to detective's assistant, unhesitatingly collecting bribes.
Trapero's protagonist takes it all in with vague mischievousness-the extent of his complicity is ambiguous, and the fate dealt out to him by film's end is neither moralistic nor lazily tacked on, but resonates with an unflinching understanding of life's absurdity. This is the kind of character study and narrative approach-simultaneously critical and humanist-so sorely absent from much of contemporary U.S. filmmaking.
El Bonaerense takes a straightforward (but never dull) realist approach toward its subject, a nonjudgmental investigation of the role of the police in modern society. Trapero wisely steers clear of a sensationalist, leering portrayal of corruption and violence, and the beauty of El Bonaerense lies in the small details, accumulated in crisply edited sequences that proceed with almost dreamlike inevitability. Although the overall mood of the film is in accord with Zapa's aimlessness and weary duplicity (making him a direct descendant of Céline's antiheroes), Trapero knows when to go with scenes that function dialectically. Thus, after a chaotic Christmas Eve at headquarters, Zapa and his fellow officers join in an exhilarating yet somewhat pathetic bacchanal, punctuated by sparklers and celebratory gun fire. Similarly, Zapa's fling with colleague Mabel (Mimí Ardú), his superior in the department, is alternately passionate and empty, loving and estranged. Zapa's failure to connect with Mabel's young son hints at the failure of authority haunting the film, which extends beyond its characters to encompass the problems at the very heart of Argentina's failed government.
Along with Trapero, who elicits striking performances from Román, Ardú and Darío Levy as the corrupt Det. Gallo, cinematographer Guillermo Nieto deserves credit for providing El Bonaerense with its unique look. Nierto captures daytime Buenos Aires with richly subdued colors, in startlingly contrast to the wild, hallucinatory neon hues of the night scenes. The imagery perfectly accords with Zapa's misadventures in a world that's utterly alien to him and yet somehow soothing in its sensuousness and sadness. But while El Bonaerense directs attention to its surroundings, both visually and sociologically, it never loses focus by making general claims about the state of Argentina. Like his protagonist, Trapero is only 32-unlike his protagonist, Trapero has an unquestionably bright future ahead.
© 2003 by The Film Society of Lincoln Center
