Most helpful customer reviews
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5.0 out of 5 stars
A Bizarre But Touching Christmas Eve In Argentina, Mar 19 2004
FELICIDADES (an Argentinean greeting that is used for Merry Christmas,etc) is a rare little film that sweeps us into a new kind of holiday madness and carries many messages of universal depth. Christmas Eve in Rosario and Buenos Aires finds a melange of odd yet lovable characters in that last minute whirlwind of anxiety that accompanies Christmas preparations. During the titles that open this film we see a kitchen filled with far too many chefs as though to let us know that too many cooks spoil the broth. That kitchen is forever gone once the film opens but the 'broth' remains. And oddly enough the opening is a Bat Mitzvah in Rosario where a loony standup comedian sets the mood for a farce. In the audience is a young man in love, who must get to Buenos Aires to be with his beloved. The beginning of the madness pairs the comedian with the lover in a hilarious car trip to Buenos Aires that signals just a few of the random happenstances that weave throughout the story. Out of gas in the middle of nowhere, the lover takes off on foot in search of gas and ....Meanwhile, a physician delivers an infant boy (heads up!) and leaves the hospital to stroll in the heat of the night, eyeing a beautiful women with whom he plans a tryst, only to be waylaid by encountering a wheelchair bound man of the street who manages to have our physician carry him up flights of stairs to his shoddy apartment. This chance encounter engenders some of the most tender moments of the film as rich doctor and poor paraplegic merge into a sensitive bonding. Meanwhile, on the street as a last minute shopper for a specific toy for his son, is a dentist who befriends an elderly ailing man and the two are entrapped by police to serve as witnesses for a warrant-less search of a 'criminal's' apartment. Once in the apartment the law gives way to the division of the spoils of the of the contents until our dentist is able to extricate his elderly companion to a hospital. After the good doctor leaves his paraplegic friend he finds his way back to his tryst, only to accidentally lead to the demise of the woman's tiny dog and in trying to hide this fact he sees the lover (from the Bat Mitzvah in Rosario) knocking unsuccessfully at her door.Sound jumbled and intricate and bizarre and Felliniesque? Well, it is, and this is where Director Lucho Bender gives notice that he is a talent to watch. He is blessed with a cast of superb actors - Gaston Pauls (Nine Queens), Silke, Luis Machin, Carlos Belloso, Pablo Cedron, Marcelo Mazzarello, among others. The photography is splendid, and the atmosphere is intoxicating. This is one of those special films that bode well for repeated watchings. In Spanish with English subtitles.
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1.0 out of 5 stars
Stay away!, Oct 13 2003
By A Customer
So when I bought this movie I thought I was making a good choice... oh how wrong I was... I found that this movie was very slow paced and was rather boring... now to fully understand the film, one must know something about argentine society because there are a lot a subtle critics about corruption etc... I was fully aware of these allusions as I've travelled and lived in Argentina, but it simply didn't help... this movie only had a few scences that were of any interest. I saw this movie for the first (and last) time with a group of about 10 friends, and at least 5 people fell asleep. There are so many wonderful Argentine films out there.... but this isn't one of them.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
hard to find something like it !!, Aug 31 2002
this is my all times favourite. i hardly could find a movie more human. this is as real as life. everytime i watch it, it keeps on surprising me, makeing me laugh and feel sorry for those guys. it's about different persons who, trying really hard to make their x-mas happy, they show their selfishness to get it, ruining everything, for them and for those who are around them, everything in an environment so few glamorous as real life is.
so brilliant and real as only movies made with the heart can be.
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