The Arrangement

An official from a state company turns up in a poor neighbourhood with no running water and makes an offer: if everyone on the street puts in a little money, he will have the pipes laid. All the neighbours agree, except one. Luis, who works as a painter, will not pay a bribe, and that refusal sets him against his family, his neighbours and his closest friends. The film puts the cost of moral stubbornness next to what the neighbourhood needs day to day; nobody here is acting out of malice, they are all just looking at the water. Roberto Cossa and Carlos Somigliana wrote the screenplay, and the film opened in Argentina during the final months of military rule. Federico Luppi appears in Fernando Ayala’s eighty two minute film, completed in 1983.