Nordeste
Argentina / France / Spain / Belgium,
2005, 104 min
Shown in 2006
CREDITS
- dir
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Juan Solanas
- prod
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Aton Soumache, Alexis Vonarb, Iker Monfort
- scr
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Juan Solanas, Eduardo Berti
- cam
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Félix Monti
- editor
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Fernando Franco
- mus
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Eduardo Makaroff
- cast
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Carole Bouquet, Aymara Rovera, Mercedes Sampietro, Ignacio Ramon Jiménez, Emilio Bardi
- source
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TF1 International, Immeuble Central Park, 9 rue Maurice Mallet, 92130 Issy-les-Moulineaux, France. FAX: +33-1-41-41-31-60. EMAIL: capiot@tf1.fr.
-
COMMENTS
Skyy Prize contender. Juan Solanas and Aymara Rovera in attendance.
OTHER
Opening with a shot of a cow being slaughtered, Northeast demonstrates from the beginning that it will be about life-and-death matters, about the ruthless things people do when their most fundamental needs are at stake. Carole Bouquet plays Hélène, an affluent French businesswoman in her 40s. In the corporate boardroom, she is the mistress of her universe. But her deep desire to adopt a child will lead to a gradual shift in her feelings of superiority. Her quest takes her to Argentina, where, to her great frustration, a planned adoption is thwarted. She then learns of a particular place, in the northeast, where anything goes. Babies are for sale in this rural, impoverished region. There we find Juana (Aymara Rovera), a poor, pregnant woman with a 13-year-old son who is about to be evicted from her shack in the countryside. By coincidence the two women meet, and thus begins an unexpected relationship. Hélène, who started out on her journey in a self-centered and businesslike manner, now begins to show an interest in the other woman’s problems. Whether her sympathy is genuine or hypocritical is perhaps irrelevant; after all, each has something the other needs. As events wind to a conclusion, director Juan Solanas plays with two inseparable aspects of human nature: the empathy which unites us and the self-centeredness that tears us apart (or is it the other way around?). Northeast won the top prize at the Stockholm Film Festival, where Carole Bouquet and Aymara Rovera shared the prize for best actress.
—Miguel Pendás
FACTOID #257
Funny Girl was selected by the San Francisco Film International to receive the Samuel Goldwyn Award as the best picture made in the U.S. in 1968. Star Barbara Streisand and producer Ray Stark attended the Festival to pick up the award.
