(FOUR STARS)
The irruption of writer and psychoanalyst Luis Gusmán (1944) in Argentine literature did not go unnoticed. “The bottle”his first novel, published in 1973, was prohibited in 1977, for the military civic dictatorship. It was argued that it was “immoral”, because it attacked the family, the church and sexuality, no less. Fifty years have passed in which the author continued the path of letters, and published more than ten fiction books, essays and notes in different cultural supplements and literary magazines.
In “Not even dead have you lost your name”from 2002, the plot delves into the intricacies of the identity, that set of characteristic features of a person that begin to develop since we came into the world. HE
they deepen in childhood, continue through adolescence and finish hatching in adulthood, when we become aware of our place in the world.
Needless to say, in a society like ours, which suffered something as terrible as the birth of children in captivity and their misappropriation, the issue is hot. The wounds are still open and these little ones, now adults, have the fundamental right to know who their biological parents were.
The director Beatriz Pustulnik, he devoted himself to the task of transferring the story imagined by Gusmán, to the theatrical sphere and achieved a piece loaded with sensitivity that reflects on everything that happened. In the play, Federico (Matías Turina) is a boy who has lost his parents during those years of lead. Ana (Matilde Campilongo), is the woman who two decades ago saved the young man from the kidnappers, she also suffered a kidnapping and wants to know what happened to her missing husband.
Varelita (Juan Trzenko), is a former repressor who appears to blackmail her, asking for money in exchange for information about her husband. This man, in macabre communion with Varela (Jorge Paz), a retired military man, married to the disturbing Gloria (Silvia Trawier), kidnapped, tortured, and appropriated property from his victims.
We will not anticipate here what happens when all of them cross again in the present. We will only say that time, as Marguerite Yourcenar wrote, “is a great sculptor” and that a hopeful present can emerge from the broken remains of the past. Within the homogeneous cast, the moving presence of Campilongo, the nuances of Turina and the disturbing appearance of Trzenko stand out, someone who manages to transmit suspicion and fear with a single glance.
