Movie Review: Lost Embrace

Last night I gathered Ronnie and Cathy and made them go with me to the Music Box Theatre on Southport. We went to see Lost Embrace–an Argentine film about a jewish family in Buenos Aires. In one fell swoop, I got both my cultural obsessions.

It was easy to convince Cathy to go–90 minutes of the Argentine accent. Definitely. Ronnie was harder, but I worked some magic with regards to Hebrew and promises of seeing a bad good movie with him.

Lost Embrace is a poor translation of the spanish title of the film: Un Abrazo Partido. As the director explained in an interview, “For me the relationship between a father and a son is fascinating,” he continues. “With a mother, it is natural, spontaneous. But between father and son, it is unnatural, absolutely artificial. You must teach your son that you are the father. Ariel hadn’t seen his father since he was a baby, and when he returns, he is very different from the concept Ariel had constructed. They must rebuild their relationship. When you discover your father is different from what you thought, it changes your point of view toward life in general.” The embrace between father and son at the end of the film is tentative. “It’s not an American movie,” says Burman, laughing. He explains that the Spanish title of the film, “Un Abrazo Partido,” translates into “ALMOST an embrace.”

Watching the movie was a bit like time travel, listening to the Argentine accent and vocabulary, but moving forward in my life and seeing the judaica, the rabbi giving advice, and the jewish themes. About an hour into the movie, the father appears and Ronnie leaned over and said, “So now the story starts?”

It was a slow movie, a taste of Ariel’s life during the crisis in Buenos Aires. Searching for any tidbit about his father and trying to find a way to leave the country. You would think after 25 yeras he would have every story he could have, but at the end there are a couple bombs dropped that would send anyone into a family crisis.

If you can catch it, it is worth seeing. I probably won’t see it again, but am glad I went. As the director said, it isn’t an american movie.