The South

Fernando E. Solanas's 1988 Argentine film follows Floreal, released from prison after the end of the military dictatorship. Instead of going home he spends the whole night in the streets of Buenos Aires, postponing the confrontation with his wife and meeting people from his past along the way. Most of the people he meets are dead or imagined. The film does not explain the ambiguity; talking with the dead sits as an ordinary condition in Solanas's narrative. The city functions as both a real place and a site of memory. Tango is the film's second language. Roberto Goyeneche appears as himself and the songs are part of the narrative; the music here is not decoration but the vehicle carrying what the characters cannot say. Solanas won the best director award at Cannes for this film. Who it's for: those who like Latin American political cinema and poetic narrative. Who it's not for: viewers looking for a straightforward account; the film never marks the boundary between the real and the imagined.