PIFF 2010: memo from the front line
The 33rd Portland International Film Festival (PIFF) kicked off on Thursday the 11th. PIFF — maybe not the greatest of acronyms, but whacha gon’ do? — is an event I have relished each year since I discovered it in February 1999, my first winter in Portland.
Some cineastes like to see how many movies they can cram into the fortnight plus a couple of days of the festival. I would run myself ragged if I tried to do that. Right now it appears I will catch eight to ten films this year, extending to the festival the maxim I customarily employ with coffee and wine: drink a bit less, enjoy it more.
13 February 2010
Music on Hold
dir. Hernán A. Goldfrid
Argentina
Ezequiel is a music composer in the grip of composer’s block. Up against the deadline to complete the music for a film, all he can come up with is trite drivel. Plus, he is broke and behind on his mortgage, the bank is about to repossess his house, and his ex-wife is on his case to return the drill he borrowed.
When he calls the bank manager to cancel an appointment, he gets put on hold while his call is forwarded from functionary to functionary, with the usual “hold on music” in the background. Fate steps in, and one of the recordings gives him an idea for exactly the music the film calls for, but he catches only a snatch of it before Paula, an up and coming young bank executive, picks up. He jots down a few notes, but it is not enough. He remains blocked. He has to find that hold on music.
Meantime, Paula is about as pregnant as one gets and in a tizzy because she has just gotten a call from her overbearing mother, who has flown unannounced from Madrid to Buenos Aires and is eager to see her daughter and meet her grandson’s father. It turns out Paula has been afraid to tell her mother that Santiago the boyfriend did not want to have kids and split when they found out she was pregnant. She decided to raise the child by herself. Her mother will think this is a disaster, and Paula will never hear the end of it. Hence her dilemma. The only resolution she can come up with is to lie to her mother for the rest of her life.
Ezequiel is at Paula’s office trying to find that elusive recording of hold on music when Paula’s mother shows up, and Paula blurts that this is Santiago, her boyfriend, her child’s father. Ezequiel does not have a clue what’s going on but plays along, and the movie plays out from there.
Ezequiel is somewhat bumbling and absentminded, not a man adept at practical affairs, but a good-hearted fellow. Paula is headstrong and stubborn, with something of her mother’s take-charge nature, but also with a good spirit. The two rub each other the wrong way at the outset, but in the spirit of the romantic comedy begin to have feelings for one another as they bumble through one travail after another.
There is nothing profound or especially original here. There does not have to be. One mark of a well-told story is that we come to suspend disbelief and care about what happens to these people. The pace is quick, the dialogue deft, and the actors first rate. I laughed and laughed; and as those who have been around me of late might observe, I can do with some laughter in my life.
No, nothing profound. Just a delight. I would see this one again.