Moon of Avellaneda

The sports club in a Buenos Aires neighbourhood has gone under. It once held the dances, the matches and the meetings; now even the electricity bill goes unpaid. The board is debating whether to sell the building to a casino. Roman was born the night the club was founded and is the only one against it. The film is not interested in nostalgia. It is interested in who actually needs what has been lost: there is no rational case for saving the club and the film does not hide it. Roman's resistance does not end in victory either. The form is ensemble drama: the clubhouse, the meeting room, the dance hall and the streets around them. The scenes of the past are colourful and crowded, the present is empty. Juan José Campanella directed. The film was made just after Argentina's economic collapse of 2001, and the club stands directly for the state of the country; audiences received it that way. Ricardo Darín plays Roman, with Eduardo Blanco and Mercedes Morán completing the cast. Campanella and Darín made film after film in this period and would go on to win an Academy Award with The Secret in Their Eyes. Who it is for: viewers who like Argentine cinema and social drama centred on a neighbourhood. Who it is not for: anyone bothered by emotional excess. The film is long, several subplots are unnecessary and the finale goes openly for tears.