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Lion's Den (2008)

Director: Pablo Trapero

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From Time Out Film Guide

For his fifth feature, Trapero takes his camera into the Argentine prison system, working on location and often with non-professional actors and real prisoners to tell the fictional, compelling story of Julia (Gusman), a pregnant, 26-year-old student who wakes up one morning to find that one of her two male flatmates is dead. Julia is convicted, and we spend most of the rest of the film observing her relationship with other prisoners, both before and after the birth of her son, Thomas, and her growing, close friendship with Marta (García), a mother incarcerated alongside her several children. Partly an unflinching social realist study of jail from a feminist perspective, Leonera also pays attention to the class differences between Julia and her fellow inmates: Julia is from a relatively wealthy background, which makes the casting of Gusman, whose refinement and beauty marks her out in the ensemble cast, all the more appropriate. There are welcome ambiguities too, concerning both Julia’s guilt and, specifically, her future.

Author: Dave Calhoun 2008-09-15 13:50:28

Time Out Film Guide