A Week Alone
Una Semana Solos
International Showcase
(Argentina, 2008, 110 mins)
In Spanish with English subtitles
35mm
Directed By: Celina Murga
Producer: Juan Villegas
Screenwriters: Celina Murga, Juan Villegas
Cinematographer: Marcelo Lavintman
Editor: Eliane Katz
Cast: Magdalenta Capobianco, Eleonora Capobianco, Ignacio Giménez
Presenting a world nearly devoid of adults, Celina Murga’s beguiling feature allows the mercurial openness of its young subjects to determine the mood and pace of the film. A group of teens and pre-teens is left alone in their over-landscaped, gated housing development while their parents are out of town. Although they still attend school, the children spend most of their time swimming, drinking too much chocolate milk, and breaking into empty houses. When a housekeeper invites her less-privileged younger brother to visit for a few days, Murga reveals the artificial environment to be less Edenic than it first appeared.
Willfully obscuring needless details (the parents’ absence and the children’s relations with each other are only gradually and partially explained), the film focuses on microscopic incidents that chart moments of social or sexual awakening. Featuring uniformly superb performances from its first-time actors, especially real-life sisters Magdalena and Eleonora Capobianco, who provide the film’s emotional center—this is a coming-of-age story devoid of sentimental triumphs or tragedies, but redolent with the fleeting beauty of empty days free of consequence.
Host Consulate General & Promotion Center of the Argentine Republic in Los Angeles
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