CUENCA, Spain — Guillermo Francella, Mariano Cohn and Gaston Duprat, star and directors of Disney+/Star+ smash hit “The Boss,” have dropped a first packed quickfire international trailer of anthology movie “Homo Argentum,” their new collaboration and one of a select number of Argentine titles bidding fair this year to make substantial box office in Argentina and break out abroad.
“Homo Argentum” will hit cinema theaters in Argentina on Aug. 14, its release handled by Star Distribution, a subsid of Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.
Set up at Buenos Aires-based powerhouse Pampa Films, behind “Chinese Takeaway” (2011), Disney 2019 standout series “Monzón: A Knockout Blow” and doc feature breakout “Muchachos,” “Homo Argentum” is scheduled to bow on Aug. 14.
Gloriamundi (“Bellas Artes,” “Chinese Take-Away”) produces out of Spain. “Homo Argentum” is co-produced by Rhino Film, Dea Film and Blue Film.
Francella stars in all 16 episodes of the movie anthology which look, if the trailer is anything to go by, to expose the bloodymindedness, self-idolatry and, above all, hypocrisy of many characters, living a big city life and “subject to the invisible pressure under which we live in a modern-day megalopolis,” Cohn and Duprat have said.
“We talk about buried contradictions, desires, frustrations, emergencies, paranoia and egotism which result from our social life and, when exposed with no form of filter, present us with profound moral dilemmas,” they added.
Doing so, Cohn and Duprat return to their hallmark mode of psychological satire, filtered through a customary comedy-drama prism.
“The film’s concept, its axis, is current Argentine idiosyncracies, but the film talks about contemporary human behaviour in general,” a synopsis runs. The increasing accumulation of foibles, as in “Wild Tales,” Argentinians might argue, is redolently Argentine.
Francella’s roles run a very broad gamut, and look like a platform for his extraordinary acting talents. His characters, glimpsed in the trailer, just to settle on a few, range from a smiling illegal street currency trader to a track-suited priest and a widower who introduces his new partner to his aghast children, a timid security guard in the company of a much younger seductive woman, to a grandad who buys his grandson a swanky robot toy to a man partying leading a conga line dance routine and a father who has to explain to a knocking-40 son that it’s time to move out of home.
In the two most developed episodes in the trailer, in one, shot in Sicily, Francella’s character takes a trip to the Italian mountain village his grandfather came from. He meets an aged woman dressed in widow’s black who recognises his name. Cut to Francella’s character being chased out of the village, his dreams of glory as a returning prodigal grandson seemingly dashed.
In another, an audience get to its feet to applaud a famed film director who’s accepting a prize at an awards gala, his face daubed in Indigenous face paint style. Later the trailer features a scene of the director shooting bemused members of an Indigenous community. “The elevator doesn’t go to the top floor. They’re as thick as a brick,” the director comments with withering sarcasm.
Often the trailer takes in very briefly a set up in an episode, but not the whole of the pay-off. Or vice-versa. One senses, however, that the vision of modern city life of “Homo Argentum” will beg to differ with some pieties uttered by two of Francella’s 16 characters. “Argentinians stand out individually. They are all about family,” says the party dancer. “We care about others. We have values,” says another character. “I can’t understand why we can’t succeed as a country.” “Homo Argentum” looks set to offer an often hilarious explanation.
“Homo Argentum” is influenced by films from the Golden Age of Italian cinema, like the 20-part “The Monsters,” as well as iconic titles such as “Down and Dirty,” “An Average Little Man” and “Viva Italia,” among other gems of a sarcastic Italian comedy of which Francella and the directors are admirers.
Cohn and Duprat have also written and directed “Official Competition,” starring Penelope Cruz, Antonio Banderas and Oscar Martínez, star of Cohn and Duprat’s “The Distinguished Citizen,” which won him a Venice Festival Volpi Cup for best actor.
Their credits also include series “Nada,” a rare outing into TV by Robert De Niro, who co-stars with Argentina’s Luis Brandoni.
Homo Argentum
Courtesy of Pampa Films
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