VALENTIN
Reviewed by: Harvey S. Karten Grade: B- Miramax Films Directed by: Alejandro Agresti Written by: Alejandro Agresti Cast: Julieta Cardinali, Carmen Maura, Jean Pierre Noher, Mex Urtizberea, Rodrigo Noya, Alejandro Agresti Screened at: Broadway, NYC, 6/12/03
As we grow up, most of us run into abrupt changes in our lives, good or bad, that affect us deeply. The death of a grandparent or a parent; the illness of a sibling; our first kiss. Aside from these major landmarks, we may have yearnings that last for years. A loneliness that prompts us to seek a new friend, a new parent if one is missing from the household; a desire to be a cop or fireman or astronaut. Some of us probably think our lives are too trivial, our accomplishments or even our disasters too uninteresting for anyone outside our immediate circles to be concerned. On the face of it, writer-director Alejandor Agresti's childhood is not so different from that of many others, and if you were to hear about his youthful longings, you would likely say, "So?" Yet a film embracing a childhood could hit an audience vein, creating a world that might not shake the viewers to their foundations but would nonetheless be a pleasant way to spend some time at the movies. "Valentin" is just that sort of picture, covering a period in a precocious boy's life that would remain with him indelibly. As you watch this short, wispy film, you'd likely get the feeling that "Valentin" is so closely autobiographical that its creator added absolutely no false notes. If Alejandro Agresti's boyhood is nothing special there must be millions who have lived through the crisis that affected him at the age of eight the sincerity of the acting, the honesty and credibility of its portrayals give the film a kind of transcendence.
Writer-director Agresti obviously got quite a charge taking for himself the small role of the hot-tempered father of young Valentin, acting out his own dad's mean spirit and getting the tensions out of his system, not unlike a patient in analysis who gets to perform in a sociodrama. Because his dad drove Valentin's mother away, the eight-year-old boy (Rodrigo Noya) is missing the mom who has disappeared from his life and, absent her return he'd settle happily for a stepmother who could move into his Buenos Aires home with his dad who is also relatively absent from the boy's life. Living with an out-of-touch grandmother (Carmen Maura), a woman who talks to herself and lives in the past, thinking and speaking about her now deceased husband, Valentin takes on the role of Cupid. In that he's much like the Haley Joel Osment character in "Pay It Forward" who acts to fix up his mom with his favorite teacher. Meeting his playboy father's latest girlfriend, the beautiful, 22- year-old Leticia (Julieta Cardinali), he plunges into the role, revealing far more information to her than his dad would have liked.
While Agresti makes you aware at all times of the movie's theme the search of a lonely boy for a mother he throws in an incident that has no bearing on the central plot simply because the situation was part of his life. When the local priest delivers a sermon in praise of the murdered revolutionary Che Guevara (the year is 1969), many in the congregation understandably walk out. Though the sermon does not impinge on Valentin's heavily narrated story, Agresti is taking us out of the enclosed family quarters into the poltics of Argentina at the time, a country under military rule with an overlay of anti-Semitism. Because of the political climate, Valentin is curious about Jews, particularly considering that his own mother is Jewish. In some particularly cute snippets of dialogue, he asks the 22-year-old Laetitia whether she is a follower of that religion and proceeds to question his neighbor, Rufo (Mex Urtizberea), an often tipsy piano teacher, asking whether it's "good to be Jewish." One striking visual has Valentin dressed in a space suit complete with oxygen tents, all modeled by him, walking about his rooms as though floating in the absence of gravity.
Again: there's nothing here that's strikingly new or penetrating. "Valentin" can't hold its own against a coming-of-age movie like the Chinese language "Together." But "Valentin" would not be a bad picture to take your pre-pubescent child to since unlike, say, "The Lizzy Maguire Movie" and "Daddy Day-Care," the conversations between adults and kid are realistic and the entire production is sincerely felt.
Rated PG-13. 83 minutes. Copyright 2003 by Harvey Karten at Harveycritic@cs.com
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