Crane World

Rulo is fifty, was briefly a known musician once, and is now looking for work as a crane operator. His medical does not clear, his age counts against him, and in the end he has to take a job at a site in the south. Pablo Trapero shot his first film in black and white on sixteen millimetre with a cast almost entirely of non-professionals, and the man in the lead genuinely knew how to operate a crane. Nothing turns on an event; the subject is the act of looking for work, the waiting, the forms, the refusals. It is treated as a starting point both for the Argentine economic collapse of the late nineties and for the new Argentine cinema. There is humour and no consolation anywhere. Who it is for: viewers who like Latin American social realism and low-budget debuts. Who it is not for: anyone expecting plot, since the film is deliberately without incident.