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La Edad Media
The Middle Ages
Argentina 2022
produced by El Pampero Cine
directed by Alejo Moguillansky, Luciana Acuña
starring Cleo Moguillansky, Alejo Moguillansky, Luciana Acuña, Lisandro Rodríguez, Walter Jakob, Lalo Rotavería, Luis Biasotto, Oscar Strasnoy
written by Alejo Moguillansky, Luciana Acuña, Walter Jakob, music by Fernando Tur, Oscar Strasnoy
review by Mike Haberfelner
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It's
2020, and the pandemic has just struck, and the whole world is on
lockdown - a condition that lasted for 9 months straight in
Argentina - and that naturally forced changes in everyone's life.
Alejo (Moguillansky) is a director and editor suddenly forced to
direct a Samuel Beckett adaptation via zoom, his wife Luciana (Acuña)
is a dancer and choreographer who tries to continue her work via Zoom,
with only modest success, while their pre-teen daughter Cleo
(Moguillansky) soon learns how to cheat at remote schooling. And while her
parents are both caught up in their own projects, she finds enough time to
trying to achieve her own goal: To save enough money to buy a powerful
telescope. But of course, a girl her age can't get her hands on the kind
of money for a telescope without some outside help - so enter Moto (Walter
Jakob), a bike courier who soon enough starts to work as her fence as she
starts to nick her parents' things and has him selling them. Of course,
galopping inflation forces her to have him selling more and more. For the
longest time, Cleo's parents haven't got a clue, in fact not until the
telescope is actually delivered. And when they find out, after a short
period of shock and upset, they follow their daughter's example ...
Now during the pandemic, lockdown movies came out a dime a
dozen pretty much, and while one can only respect filmmakers for not
giving up in adverse times, most of these films actually looked like
exactly what they were, recorded Zoom calls hastily cobbled together that
more often than not just underlined the sad shortcomings of the approach. La
Edad Media takes a slightly different stab to circumvent the
restrictions, as the three leads were (and still are) an actual family
living together, and they all (including young Cleo) did double duty as
crew - which objectively speaking sounds like a recipe for disaster, even
more so when one takes into account that the film (according to director
Alejo Moguillansky) had no actual script but was basically just footage
shot by the family to pass the time in a creative way ... and yet, this
movie is great. For one, it strikes a chord with everyone who has been
affected by the Corona lockdown(s) - at this point in time, all of us -,
but also because it's just wickedly funny, it doesn't wallow in tears but
takes a light-hearted approach to it, adds satire to the situation without
ever going political, and spins a very humourous and wildly entertaining
tale within the limitations of the time, but in a way it uses the
limitations to its story's advantage. In other words, a very enjoyable
comedy, and quite surely one of the best lockdown movies out there, also
because it transcends being just that.
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