The Weasel's Tale

Four elderly people live in a large house outside Buenos Aires: a once-famous actress, her husband, a director and a screenwriter. They have been tolerating one another in the same house for forty years. One day a young couple knock: they want to buy the place and to give the actress a chance to work again. The three men treat it as a threat. The subject is not old age but the difference between conning and being conned disappearing. The newcomers are plainly ill-intentioned; the residents are far more experienced. The film keeps who is trapping whom unclear for a long time. The form is classical and enjoyable. The house, long corridors, old film posters and a great deal of dialogue. The humour runs on lines and works better the darker it gets. It is a remake of a 1976 Argentine film about the same house and the same quartet. Juan José Campanella carried the story to the present and made the tone markedly funnier. The four actors are well-known figures in Argentine cinema and the jokes about their age look directly at their own careers. Graciela Borges plays the actress, Oscar Martínez the director and Luis Brandoni the writer. Who it is for: viewers who like black comedy and films built on performance. Who it is not for: anyone expecting pace; it is long and slow in the first half.