The River Train

From Viennale

Say what you will, but Argentinian cinema is unpredictable: who could have foreseen this most singular debut, which acknowledges the cinema of Leonardo Favio as its inspiration and appropriates and recalibrates Luis Ortega’s method of rendering a simple narrative strange by defying the constraints of realism, albeit without resorting to the fantastic? A boy destined to become a Malambo dancer longs to travel to Buenos Aires after realising he shares the same desire as Carlos Monzón’s character in Favio’s SOÑAR, SOÑAR (1976). From the moment he runs away from home until he reaches the city, Milo’s journey is conceived and presented from the perspective of the nine year-old protagonist, as was also the case with a child of a similar age in Abbas Kiarostami’s second feature THE TRAVELLER (1974), a film that enters into an unexpected dialogue with these two young filmmakers’ debut. The whole trip is nothing other than a journey of discovery and of learning: Milo passes through a deranged casting to become part of a theatre production and is even initiated into poetry upon hearing a poem by Francisco Madariaga, spoken in the voice of the train driver. (Roger Koza)