Film
Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in Chicago, plus articles, trailers and more
- Home
- Box Office
- Listings
- Trailers
- Features
Bookmark this page- Edition:
Familia Rodante (2004)
Director: Pablo Trapero
Movie review
From Time Out London
Having reaped great acclaim with ‘Crane World’ and ‘El Bonaerense’, Argentinian writer-director Pablo Trapero ups the ante with one of the finest films released here this year. Not that his achievement makes itself fully felt until the final shot; before then, it may just feel like a consistently amusing but rather ramshackle, even chaotic road-movie with no real plot or thematic substance.It starts simply: Emilia (Graciana Chirino) feeding pets and preparing for a visit by family and friends to celebrate her 84th birthday. At the party there’s a surprise call from a forgotten cousin, inviting her to be matron of honour at a wedding in the village of her birth. Cue for the entire clan – four generations (if one includes a new baby) – to pile into her son-in-law’s ancient camper van and make the long, often testing trip from Buenos Aires to the Brazilian border.
There’s no real drama: just a risk of breakdown and the tensions that arise from cramming so many folk – some glad they’re there, others not – into a small, hot, bumpy space. Trapero knows family can be both crutch and burden (or haven and prison); that unsentimental understanding, expressed in deftly observed details, brings much deliciously gentle, telling humour to the movie, which often feels like Altman at his most gleefully wayward and witty. But warmth’s there, too; with the magnificently understated final shot mentioned above, it becomes clear we’ve seen a film of subtlety and wisdom, a shaggy-dog story about learning to deal with disappointment, compromise, confusion and loss: learning, in short, to survive life in all its painful truth and beauty.
Author: GA
Time Out London Issue 1839: November 16-23 2005
Cast & crew
Director: Pablo Trapero
Cast: Liliana Capurro, Graciana Chironi, Ruth Dobel, Federico Esquerro, Bernardo Bernardo, Laura Glave, Leila Gomez, Nicolás López full cast
Genre(s): Comedy
Duration: 103 mins
Features
Gray's anatomy
James Gray wants to push buttons—again.
The next big thing?
Gigantic Releasing tries to rethink indie distribution…without movie theaters.
Red Diva: Lyubov Orlova, First Lady of Soviet Cinema
So you think you can dance, comrade?
Puppet master
Coraline director Henry Selick takes stop-motion animation into 3-D.
Socratic method
Laurent Cantet's approach on the set matches the message of his film.
Wander woman
Kelly Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy puts a Bush-era spin on the road movie.
Oscars
Read our interviews with the nominees, our reviews of the nominated films and more.
What do you think?
Post your review now