Diario para un cuento
Argentina,
1998, 96 min
Shown in 2000
CREDITS
- dir
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Jana Bokova
- prod
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Pablo Kompel
- scr
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Jana Bokova, Leslie Megahey, Gualberto Ferrari
- cam
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Alfredo Mayo
- editor
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Marcela Saenz
- cast
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Germán Palacios, Silke, Inés Estévez, Héctor Alterio, Engrique Pinti
- source
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Instituto Nacional de Cine y Artes Audiovisuales, Lima 319, 4º “403”, 1101 Buenos Aires, Argentina. FAX: 54-11-43-79-09-18
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COMMENTS
Jana Bokova in person.
OTHER
Earnest, multilingual Elias is a budding novelist who quotes Keats and ekes out a living as a translator along the seedy docklands of 1952 Buenos Aires. He’s sleeping with the well-off Susana who tries to further his career by taking him to bourgeois soirées. But Elias is more interested in translating letters from the foreign boyfriends of illiterate prostitutes who work out of the Black Cat nightclub, oftentimes using his writing talents to change their words of heartbreak or betrayal into psalms of love and affection. Elias makes friends with an elderly communist who is still wanted by the police and slowly becomes attracted to the streetwise, straight-talking Anabel. The pace quickens with the arrival of Anabel’s sailor boyfriend and Elias’s realization that the Black Cat is actually more than it seems. Based on a story by Julio Cortazár, Jana Bokova’s film creates a soulful, self-contained universe out of the sepia-tinted interiors of the Black Cat club with its jealous rivalries and the rain-drenched street corners of Buenos Aires, neatly suggesting the dream world of vague ideals which Elias inhabits. The performances, particularly from Enrique Pinti as a bar owner, tango singer and teller of harsh truths, are uniformly strong, while the accordion tango score heightens the film’s soulful, romantic aura.
—Jonathan Holland, Variety
FACTOID #75
Italian screen siren and ’60s sex symbol Sophia Loren appeared in two films screened at the San Francisco International Film Festival: Ettore Scola’s A Special Day in 1977 and Francesco Rosi’s More Than a Miracle in 1981.
