Balnearios

The film is about spa and beach towns that stand empty in winter and overflow in summer. It is built like an album: cities left under water, luxury hotels, sea creatures, sand castles and people who put their faith in water for their health come one after another. The tone of the account is odd and playful; it uses the form of a documentary, but some of the stories it tells are invented and the film does not hide it. Working out what is real is therefore left to the viewer. What the film is most interested in is not the places themselves but the meaning people load onto a holiday and onto water. The account moves in short sections and does not stretch any of them. Mariano Llinas’s eighty two minute Argentine film was completed in 2002.