Elefante Blanco - Pablo Trapero

Elefante Blanco (Pablo Trapero — Argentina/Spain/France) 110 minutes

Pablo Trapero’s Elefante Blanco premiered at Cannes last May but it is on its French release, in the run-up to the election of Jorge Mario Bergoglio as Pope, that it has acquired an uncanny prescience. The film, a tale of Argentine priests ministering in the massive shanty-town of Ciudad Oculta, actually features the Archbishop of Buenos Aires as a character, an office that was occupied by none other than Cardinal Bergoglio from 1998 until last week. It is not clear if the character is explicitly based on the man who is now pope, but the film’s subject matter and background are certainly reminiscent of the preoccupations of a man who has been outspoken throughout his office on the question of poverty.

The film is seen through the eyes of two Catholic priests ministering in the local parish — Father Nicolas (Jérémie Renier), a young Belgian, who is suffering from survival guilt after the massacre of the villagers he was lived among in the Peruvian Amazon, and Father Julián (the ever wonderful Ricardo Darín) who has been a selfless padre for the shantytown for 15 years but who is now diagnosed with cancer. Along with Luciana, a young social worker (the beautiful manga-eyed Martina Gusman), they are the resident’s only tie to officialdom and the bureaucracy that prefers to pretend the slum, 15,000-people strong, does not exist. This despite the fact is sprawls around the white elephant of the title, the massive shell of an unfinished Perón-era hospital.

The priests fight day-to-day battles with the social scourges of the slum, many of them drug-related; as is often the case, the only people in the neighbourhood with any money are the narco-traffickers. In one particularly impressive scene Father Nicolas braves a visit to a gangster’s headquarters to retrieve the body of a local youth they have executed, breaking, in doing so, one of Father Julián’s fundamental rules — no negotiating with the drug-lords. Thus begin the tensions among the three (the younger Father Nicolas has also embarked on a secret affair with Luciana); the film is permeated with an underlying guilt about the three who come from wealthier backgrounds, who can walk away at any time, something that was undoubtedly mirrored among Trapero and his crew, who shot the film in the very slum they depict.

Trapero specialises in gritty dramas that pick at the underbelly of Argentine society. They are also sufficiently influential to bring media and public spotlights on particular issues — his 2008 film Leonera/Lion’s Den led to improvements in women’s prisons in Argentina, while his more recent ambulance-chasing drama Carancho highlighted public-sector corruption. The ravages of poverty among Argentina’s urban poor — many of them of indigenous background — is not something that is unknown in wider Argentine society but Elefante Blanco is sure to niggle at the conscience all the more. It also includes, in a rather inconclusive subplot, a campaign to beatify Carlos Mugica, a left-leaning Jesuit priest murdered by a death squad under Isabel Perón’s government in 1974 (the film is also dedicated to him), an eery echo of the crimes the new pope has been accused of countenancing.

There is much good about the film — Trapero’s documentary eye for detail is excellent as usual, and his shoulder-hugging camera evokes the teeming nature of shanty-town life. The acting, by professional and non-professional alike, is excellent. The only problem though is the film doesn’t exactly know where to go with the story it sets up for itself (Father Julián’s cancer is revealed in the very first scene) and the structure of the final third is far too predictable. Elefante Blanco is in many respects a good film but it lacks a little extra that would elevate it above your average social drama, even if it does appear extra-interesting in the light of an Argentine pope.

The Student

The Student/El Estudiante (Santiago Mitre - Argentina) 110 minutes

On more than one occasion in Santiago Mitre’s second feature I asked myself: ‘why am I watching this?’ The tale of an Argentine student of pliable political sensibilities and his rise in student and university politics, it has little in its subject matter that ought to be of interest to anyone outside of a small sector of Argentine society. The Student, is, however, a surprisingly watchable and well-constructed tale of political intrigue. And if Danish politics is a subject worthy of internationally successful drama these days, why not Argentine university administration elections?

The titular student is Roque (played by Esteban Lamothe), a provincial starting college in Buenos Aires for the second time, who quickly loses interest in his studies to become involved in institutional politics, mainly to try and get off with Paula (Romina Paula), an attractive junior lecturer. Roque’s political skills, though they are not terribly obvious from anything the film shows us, gain the interest of  Alberto Acevedo (Ricardo Felix), a one-time ministerial attaché, who is mounting a push for the rectorate of Roque’s university. Roque is from a Perónist family, something that will be of only passing interest for many viewers but is clearly crucial for a full understanding of the film’s politics. Acevedo, on the other hand, is affiliated with a non-defined centre-left grouping that seems to be prepared to jump into bed with anyone to get into power.

I was drawn to The Student mainly by the presence of Pablo Trapero on the credits. Trapero has directed a string of excellent character-driven crime dramas in recent years and Mitre - who scripted Trapero’s last film but one, Carancho - has the older director’s verve and his keen sensibility for the nocturnal wild of Buenos Aires. Knowing that Mitre shot much of his film on the hoof, without official permission, makes it all the more impressive. As I said before, you are likely to heave loudly at some of minutiae of the parochial drama being played out on screen, but it is expertly handled, and paced like a slick thriller. When he takes up less recondite material, Mitre stands to be a director worth watching. The Student is a strange beast of a film but worth watching despite its unpromising subject matter.