** (Two stars)
“A woman hurts all over my body,” he wrote Jorge Luis Borges, in the last verse of “the threatened”, perhaps one of the most famous Love Poems that the endearing Argentine writer imagined, where he reflects the paradox of a man eternally in love, but who never manages to love completely.
The memory of that work seems to have inspired the prolific director Manuel Gonzalez Gil to tell the story of Miguel Sánchez (Nicholas Cabre), a young philosophy professor, abandoned by Paula (mercedes funes), his girlfriend and former student.
Originally premiered at independent theater, the plot takes place in different stages of the loving duel in which the protagonist concurs to exorcise his sorrows in front of a psychoanalyst: as soon as the rupture occurs,
at three months and at six.
In vain are the therapist’s attempts to get her patient out of constant regret and complaint. Even more so when the suffering boy thinks he sees who planted him in every female figure that crosses him on the street. The particularity of the piece lies in the fact that Miguel is accompanied by an inseparable friend who is present at every moment of his life and functions as a kind of extension of his own existence. The ubiquity of Martin (Carlos Portaluppi), occurs in the sessions, in a café and even in his own imaginary dalliances.
With such quality of actors and, first of all, an interesting story, although too presumptuous, would be given the conditions to crack with laughter. But this only happens in a few moments, especially when Funes’ oiled-up histrionics unfolds and, of course, when some swear word comes up.
At least in the function that this chronicler saw, the smiles were elusive and it was possible to perceive that the public was excluded due to the number of phrases of philosophers that the protagonist cites. A Cabré that seems left to his own fate and forced to a single and tedious interpretive nuance. Like Portaluppi, whose screaming shots end up tiring.
The artistic production does not help either, combined with the thick line and the lack of creativity. In sum, it turns out a failed proposal.
