Christmas Day

FELICIDADES (an Argentinean greeting that is used for Merry Christmas,etc) is a rare little film that sweeps us into a new kind of holiday madness and carries many messages of universal depth. Christmas Eve in Rosario and Buenos Aires finds a melange of odd yet lovable characters in that last minute whirlwind of anxiety that accompanies Christmas preparations. During the titles that open this film we see a kitchen filled with far too many chefs as though to let us know that too many cooks spoil the broth. That kitchen is forever gone once the film opens but the ‘broth’ remains. And oddly enough the opening is a Bat Mitzvah in Rosario where a loony standup comedian sets the mood for a farce. In the audience is a young man in love, who must get to Buenos Aires to be with his beloved. The beginning of the madness pairs the comedian with the lover in a hilarious car trip to Buenos Aires that signals just a few of the random happenstances that weave throughout the story. Out of gas in the middle of nowhere, the lover takes off on foot in search of gas and ….Meanwhile, a physician delivers an infant boy (heads up!) and leaves the hospital to stroll in the heat of the night, eyeing a beautiful women with whom he plans a tryst, only to be waylaid by encountering a wheelchair bound man of the street who manages to have our physician carry him up flights of stairs to his shoddy apartment. This chance encounter engenders some of the most tender moments of the film as rich doctor and poor paraplegic merge into a sensitive bonding. Meanwhile, on the street as a last minute shopper for a specific toy for his son, is a dentist who befriends an elderly ailing man and the two are entrapped by police to serve as witnesses for a warrant-less search of a ‘criminal’s’ apartment. Once in the apartment the law gives way to the division of the spoils of the of the contents until our dentist is able to extricate his elderly companion to a hospital. After the good doctor leaves his paraplegic friend he finds his way back to his tryst, only to accidentally lead to the demise of the woman’s tiny dog and in trying to hide this fact he sees the lover (from the Bat Mitzvah in Rosario) knocking unsuccessfully at her door.

Sound jumbled and intricate and bizarre and Felliniesque? Well, it is, and this is where Director Lucho Bender gives notice that he is a talent to watch. He is blessed with a cast of superb actors – Gaston Pauls (Nine Queens), Silke, Luis Machin, Carlos Belloso, Pablo Cedron, Marcelo Mazzarello, among others. The photography is splendid, and the atmosphere is intoxicating. This is one of those special films that bode well for repeated watchings. In Spanish with English subtitles.

Where to buy cheap prices? -Felicidades $10.99



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