Cruz del sur, La (2003)
Directed by
Pablo Reyero
Also Known As:
The Southern Cross (International: English title)
Runtime: Argentina:87 min / France:86 min (Cannes Film Festival)
Country: Argentina / France
Language: In Spanish with German subbed
Color: Color
Sound Mix: Dolby Digital
Certification: Argentina:16
imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0321862/
http://www.enfocarte.com/4.23/cine.html
User Comments: End of the world.
This is an exceptionally disturbing film. I've seen a lot of stories about crime and punishment: but this one beats them all (except Les Amants Criminel perhaps).
The setting of southern Argentina is cold, dirty, dark, gritty and utterly desperate. The inhabitants of these cursed territories carry a lifetime of misery on their shoulders and every choice they make is the wrong one. All they have is love for each other, but their survival instincts don't allow them to show their caring side. Even with death closing in, consolation escapes them.
The double motive of the sea and religion who give and take life and there for are the only way out, are inserted beautifully. Direction is raw, wild and uncompromising and fits the subject matter perfectly. There's almost no soundtrack and no dialog: there's not much to say anyway: the background noise destroys all soothing silence.
For a fictional debut of director Reyero, this is a very uncompromisingly rough film: but ravishing in its overwhelming ugliness.
In the bleak, gritty and ultimately empty "La Cruz del Sur" (The Southern Cross), a first feature from Argentina's Pablo Reyero, a cocaine addict, her drug-running lover and his transvestite brother orchestrate an ill-fated coke heist that has unpleasant ramifications for all concerned.
But while the players may be uncommon, the game remains tediously the same.
Once the characters' initially ambiguous relationship to one another is revealed, there's not much left to keep the audience involved.
Writer-director Reyero certainly begins promisingly, with his key players intersecting at a seedy seaside bar that looks like it was caught in a 1920s Berlin time warp. From there, the obstinate Nora (Letizia Lestido), her wild-eyed boyfriend, Javier (Luciano Suardi), and Javier's long-haired, dress-wearing brother, Wendy (Humberto Tortonese), set off in Javier's ambulance toward a freshly docking shipment of cocaine.
They get the goods and temporarily hide out at a decaying resort run further into the ground by Javier and Wendy's parents (Mario Paolucci and Silvia Bayle) while a ruthless kingpin named Negro (Oscar Alegre) quickly picks up the scent.
It should come as absolutely no surprise that the three outcasts never make it to Paraguay, where Javier had planned to start a new life.
The film, on the other hand, barely makes it past the first reel.
While Reyero's disaffected cast is in possession of some convincingly lived-in faces, their self-pitying predicament -- combined with all that underlit, jittery hand-held camerawork -- give the viewer very little reason to care.
Das.Kreuz.des.Suedens.-.La.Cruz.Del.Sur.{ARG.2003}.german.Subs.avi 