Alberto Yaccelini's People of Saladillo [7/10]
   Argentina's recent economic woes have inspired countless movies in the last couple of years - and People of Saladillo is one of the more unusual and accessible additions to the 'genre'. This beguiling documentary shows how one seemingly-unremarkable town - Saladillo, in Buenos Aires province, population 35,000 - has coped with the crisis. Times are hard, but two men in particular have done more than their bit to keep spirits buoyant: they are Julio and Fabio, a two-man film-making team from the town, working and studying in Buenos Aires who at the weekends return home to make their own zero-budget, crowd-pleasing movies.
   Deploying cheap-ish digital equipment, they cut costs by using their fellow 'Saladillians' - friends, relatives, even the local Mayor - as actors. They also obtain technical help from the town's most famous resident, helicopter-designer wizard Augusto Cicare - who, even from the brief screen time allotted here, is clearly an engineering genius and emphatically deserving of his own documentary profile. Julio and Fabio then premiere the films in the town's one remaining cinema, before airing them on local TV where they regularly attract more viewers than live football matches.
   It's an endearing 'real life Cinema Paradiso' tale, told in suitably rough-edged and unpretentious style by Paris-based Yaccelini. The indefatigable Julio and Fabio are the heroes of the show, but they share the "limelight" with their fellow citizens: as in Jose Luis Torres Leiva's current Chilean documentary No Place Nowhere (about the La Matriz area of Valparaiso), the warm community spirit is unmistakeable.
   People of Saladillo also recalls Chris Smith's American Movie (1999), another chronicle of against-the-odds DIY film-makers in an economically-depressed backwater. But whereas Smith caught some flak for what was perceived to be the exploitative way he presented his hapless subjects, Yaccelini's Argentinian variant is clearly on Julio and Fabio's side every step of the way. Indeed, if anything he lays on the inspirational uplift a little thick here and there, with a closing title-card that strains too hard to send us out of the cinema with an optimistic smile on our faces. A minor lapse in what has been an informative, engaging look at a serious, pressing subject.

Inez de Oliveira Cezar's The Hours Go By 
A hostage-to-fortune title if ever there was one, as this domestic drama proceeds with an ostentatious slowness - one of several factors which might lead impatient viewers to dismiss it as the worst kind of self-indulgent arthouse pretentiousness. But at 80 minutes, these Hours don't in fact outstay their welcome: director de Oliveira shows enough flair and talent, especially on the visual side, to overcome her screenplay's dramatic shortcomings.
   As shot by Gerardo Silvatici, the film is effectively an extended hommage to Aleksandr Sokurov: specifically Mother and Son, whose anamorphic, distorted camerawork it occasionally duplicates (in a slightly grating, gratuitous manner). The focus is firmly on family relationships: after a strained breakfast in their small-town, middle-class home, fortyish, verbose, somewhat oddball father (Guillermo Arengo) takes precocious four-year-old son (Agustin Alcoba) on road-trip to a distant, wintry beach. Back home, his wife (Roxana Berco) picks up her ailing mother from a nursing home, and they spend a long afternoon together, driving and talking. The mother is played by esteemed, veteran actress Susana Campos, herself very close to death during the shoot.
   de Oliveira sustains a mood one of arch, slightly alienating ominousness: stark, striking, widescreen images combine in semi-dreamy fashion with the moody, downbeat soundtrack. It's pretty obvious that somebody is going to die at the end - and this does indeed occur, but in a fashion we don't expect. The Hours Go By is enigmatic and elliptical, hovering constantly on the edge of mannerism, but with perhaps just enough going on to sustain our interest.
   The closest recent parallel is probably with Santiago Lozano's similarly meditative and even-paced Extrano (2003) - also edited by Ana Poliak. On the evidence of these two films, judged alongside her own Pin Boy (2004), Poliak is rather more talented as a cutter than as writer/director. For de Oliveira, meanwhile (she co-wrote the screenplay with Daniel Veronese) this is a flawed but promising followup to her little-seen 2002 drama, Delivery. She's clearly of interest, but hasn't yet done enough to distinguish herself from the competitive - and increasingly crowded - crop of new Argentine cinema talent. 

William E Jones's Is It Really So Strange? 
  Well, yes, perhaps it is a bit strange that The Smiths and Morrissey should have such a prominent following among Los Angeles' Latino youth. But strange enough to justify a whole movie? Jones's nuts-and-bolts, straight-arrow, meat-and-potatoes documentary is primarily a compilation of interviews with various Smiths fans - most, but not all, Latino - as they speak articulately (if often anecdotally) about their passion for the band and the solo work. All of them testifying that, whatever his faults and foibles over the years, Morrissey has had an enormous impact on their lives.
   And along the way some analysis of the whole 'Latino Morrissey fan' phenomenon is provided, and it's not without a certain anthropological/sociological interest. But this is emphatically and unapologetically a project made by a fan, about the fans, with the fans and for the fans: viewers who aren't enthusiasts of The Smiths or Morrissey will probably dismiss it as naval-gazing self-indulgence, typical of the narcissistic solipsism which has always been Morrissey's stock-in-trade - a contribution to the hagiographic hero-worshipping cult which he has always been so assiduous in encouraging.
   These non-initiates will, however, at least be pleased that they don't have to actually listen to any of the actual music: the editing suggests that Jones was unable to obtain clearance for the songs themselves. Which makes it very - ahem - strange that we hear an original Smiths track in full over the end credits - was permission given for only the one song to be used?
   We aren't told: Jones did meet Morrissey during the filming, but the "conversation" consisted, characteristically, of evasive sub-Wildean badinage from the great man. A more telling and amusing insight into Morrissey's 'new' life in Los Angeles comes from one besotted gay fan who, working in a record shop, was bemused to see his idol enter in the company of an older "leather-daddy" and check whether his own CDs were in stock before taking off in a BMW convertible. "Why pamper life's complexities / when the leather runs smooth on the passenger's seat?"... as they used say in Manchester.

Neil Young
30th December, 2005


PEOPLE OF SALADILLO : [7/10] : Los de Saladillo aka Ceux de Saladillo : Argentina (Arg/Fr) 2005 : Alberto YACCELINI : 93 mins (timed) : recent film festivals include Buenos Aires Independent, Cinema du Reel (Paris).

THE HOURS GO BY : [6/10] : Como pasan las horas : Argentina 2004 : Ines DE OLIVEIRA Cezar : 81 mins (timed) : recent festivals include London, San Sebastian, Thessaloniki.

IS IT REALLY SO STRANGE? : [6/10] : USA 2004 : William E. JONES : 91 mins (timed) : recent film festivals include London Lesbian & Gay, Viennale (Vienna), Pride (Belfast).

All seen at home in Sunderland (UK), 29th December 2005:
People of Saladillo on VHS (with thanks to Aurelie [of AMIP])
The Hours Go By on DVD (with thanks to Alejandro Israel)
Is It Really So Strange? on DVD (with thanks to William E Jones)