Gatica, the Monkey

Leonardo Favio's 1993 Argentine film is about the boxer José María Gatica, one of the country's best-known sportsmen in the forties and fifties. The subject is not the sport but the fall. Gatica came out of poverty and became identified with the Perón years; when the political wind turned he was cast out just as quickly, and the narrative sets those two periods against each other. Favio reads his country's history through boxing. The images are stylised and the music heavily used; the narrative departs from chronology at times. It is counted among the significant films of Argentine cinema. Who it's for: viewers of Argentine cinema and political biography. Who it's not for: viewers unfamiliar with the politics of the period; the film proceeds without explaining the context.