Credits: screenplay: Anahí Berneri, Sergio Wolf; director of photography: Willi Behnisch; editor: Eliane Katz; music: Sebastian Bianchini; production design: Aili Chen; costume design: Roberta Pesci; producer: Diego Dubcovsky, Daniel Burman; production: bd cine srl.;

Country: Argentina, France

Year: 2010

Running time: 90

Colour: Colour

Format: 35 mm

Berneri proves that she is not only a better filmmaker than the overrated Lucrecia Martel (Berneri’s ENCARNACIÓN promised it was just a matter of time) but that she also tells more interesting, more in-depth stories about women in her country and how they view themselves. Erica Rivas gives a strong performance as a young mother whose ambiguous behavior with her fighting children leads to a charge of child abuse, after she shows up at the emergency room for an ostensible head wound from a fall by her younger son. The attending physicians are more concerned with all the bruises on both boys and a fracture of the little one’s arm. She does not at first realize the severity of the charges, and Berneri’s handheld camera reinforces her mental disarray. When her macho husband arrives, we witness the magnitude of her subjugation. This is not Martel’s mannered feminism: This is strong drama that also touches upon gender issues. Howard Feinstein