A Place in the World

Mario and Ana left Buenos Aires by choice and settled in a remote Argentine valley. Mario runs a school and a wool cooperative, while Ana, a doctor, keeps a clinic going with a progressive nun. Their twelve-year-old son Ernesto is growing up there. A Spanish geological engineer arrives in the valley to measure whether the area can be dammed, which is to say whether the villagers can be moved off their land. Adolfo Aristarain tells a political conflict in the form a child remembers it. The strength of the narrative is that it does not sort the sides cleanly into good and bad: the engineer is a man doing his job, and the cooperative is coming apart from inside as well. Federico Luppi plays Mario, Cecilia Roth plays Ana, and José Sacristán plays the engineer. When Argentina did not select it as their Oscar entry, the film was submitted on behalf of Uruguay and was nominated in 1993. A week later the Academy found it in breach of the eligibility rules and rescinded the nomination, the only such revocation in the category. Who it's for: Viewers who like Latin American drama, political narratives set in the countryside, and coming-of-age stories. Who it's not for: The pace is slow and the narrative is didactic in places. The emotional weight of the ending will be too much for some.