Same Love, Same Rain

In 1980 Jorge wants to write serious fiction and instead writes a column for a women's magazine. Laura is a young actress trying to start. They meet, and the film follows them across roughly twenty years, with the military dictatorship, the Falklands war, the return of democracy and the economic collapse of the nineties all running behind them. Juan José Campanella's real subject is that history does not separate this couple. What separates them is Jorge's fear of commitment and his endless postponement of his own writing. A country coming apart and a man wasting his life move at the same tempo. Ricardo Darín and Soledad Villamil lead, and the two would meet again later in Campanella's The Secret in Their Eyes. It opened on 16 September 1999. Its flaw is that the humour keeps lifting weight off the drama, and some transitions between periods are summarised too quickly. Who it is for: viewers who like Argentine cinema and love stories told across decades. Who it is not for: anyone who wants pace.