★★★1/2 Based on the successful theatrical version of Hernán Casciari’s texts, this film is close to the spirit of Esperando la carroza for several reasons. The first -and main- is the social landscape shown through grotesque and absurd humor, a landscape in which the feeling of living on the edge of the economic knife reigns, from which one always comes out with some absurd device. Many things happen in the film, populated by characters who are caricatures of other characters and to which is added a (healthy) degree of surrealism. In fact, there are times when, more than grotesque, everything seems to resemble a cartoon or a grotesque, although in all cases, the idea always subsists that love (of the family) can do anything: ultimately, on the commonplaces (which she has, some of them uninteresting) reigns over the character of Florencia Peña, that mother who becomes the support of everything and everyone. Peña, who is a talented comedian although she does not always manage to use them properly, here she can be the hilarious character -and something on television- that she usually builds, but she also has moments of tenderness, of looking in perspective, of that “middle tone” so difficult to achieve in the cinema (and anywhere). The job of the actress – like that of the protagonist of the fiction – is to support everything. She makes it.
