Toulouse Festival: Grand Prix

Rulo, who wears his age around his waist, hopes to get a job as a crane operator on a building site. He gets along somehow while his son lounges around between two gigs with his rock band. One day Rulo meets Adriana, a sandwich seller who used to be a big fan of his own band back in the sixties… Rulo's stoutness eventually keeps him out of the crane job, forcing him to leave Buenos Aires for a precarious job 2000 kilometers south in Comodoro Rivadavia…

Pablo Trapero's prize-cropping first feature was wrapped up on a meagre budget, with amateur acteurs and a black and white documentary style verging on "cinema-verite" that lends the story extra veracity. Trapero sheds a warm, humanistic light on his characters, with occasional tinges of humour. Luis Margani portrays this touching portly fifty-year-old whose nostalgia for the past helps him take the edge off an uncertain future in a society where traditional work patterns run afoul of new economic role-models.

Yannis Polinnaci