Esteros

Matías and Jerónimo were closest friends as children; they grew up together in the wetlands and as adolescence began something else formed between them. They were separated when Matías's family moved to Brazil. Ten years later he comes back for a short visit with his Brazilian girlfriend. Jerónimo is in the same place and what is between them is still there. Papu Curotto directs. Ignacio Rogers plays Matías and Esteban Masturini plays Jerónimo. It runs eighty eight minutes. It continues the director's short film Matías y Jerónimo of 2015. What interests the film is not the separation but the lie a person tells himself. Matías refused for years to admit what happened, and the narrative shows the cost; internalised shame is taken on as much as outside pressure. The narrative runs in two times. The childhood passages are warm and sunk in the landscape; the present ones are tense and rest on talk. The place is part of the narrative. The esteros of the title are the wetlands of northern Argentina and the film uses that landscape as a site of memory. It is an Argentine, Brazilian and Uruguayan co-production and travelled widely at festivals. Who it is for: viewers who like Latin American independent drama and LGBT narratives. Who it is not for: the pace is slow, little happens, and the ending does not deliver the resolution expected.