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Familia Rodante (2004)

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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

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User reviews of this film

Robert Thornton said...

Posted on Jan 07 2011 21:38 Hardly anything to write home about, pretty boring most of the time with very little out of the ordinary to offer

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Technoguy said...

Posted on Jan 29 2008 18:08 It was no Little Miss Sunshine nor Motor Cycle Diaries.It was let's what we can get out of cramming a load of one family into a camper van.Some of it felt like you were just passing the time,which could have been fast-forwarded.There were a few love affairs between the young and the not so young.We saw glimpses of the road and surrounding country-side.There are arguments and bust-ups along the way and stoppages.from the outside the camper van looks small and yet they appear to have private rooms to cannoodle and lots of space inside.It jogs along merrily enough with nothing spectacular happening.It gets to it's goal in the end,which is Emilia's role as matron of honour at her niece's wedding.Result.

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