A Place in the World

An entirely winning and deceptively unassuming portrait of life in a 'frontier' town - some hundreds of miles down the railway tracks from the Argentine capital - with an only son revisiting the small sheep-rearing community of his late adolescence and recalling both his remarkable family and the turn of events during a particular autumn some eight years before. His father, a one-time sociology professor, his mother, a doctor, and a no-nonsense nun in civvies are the three 'progressive' figures who minister to the families of the local collective they've fought to set up. But when a mysterious Spanish geologist arrives to work for the town's venal landowner, it slowly emerges that radical change is on the way. Directror Aristarain lavishes this unremarkable scenario with highly nuanced attention to character, mood and structure, and produces a film of quiet profundity, laced with gentle regret and something of the elegiac glow of some late Westerns. Evocative camerawork from Ricardo De Angelis, a fine Copland-esque score by Patricio Kauderer, and highly impressive performances. Thoughtful, informed, perfectly judged.