Ronda nocturna

Maybe, if you are old enough and you were able to be in Paris in the fifties and sixties and lived the life after midnight in the Left Bank quartiers of St. Germain and St. Michel, you will appreciate this film of a night in Buenos Aires in Our Times. Circa this year, maybe last year, certainly next year.

If you can remember the all night bar called La Pergola, where two films mentioned below were shot with hand-held cameras, you will love this new Argentine film.

Probably the major difference you will notice: The streets are less crowded than they were in the fifties and sixties of the last century in Paris and London, too. And many twentysomething rent boys started their fairly short hauls toward all kinds of stardom in Paris and London back then, making the right connections in the film business, in the nightclub business, in the fashion business all with midnight trysts. Mostly in the street. That is where the talent was.

No such luck seems in store for the kids in this Argentine night.

If you were young enough to have seen "Breathless" when it came out, and "Les Tricheurs," a few short years before, or to have lived this era yourself, you will love this pitiless new film that spares no one. You will remember the all night La Pergola party at Metro Mabillon where most of both of the films were shot..... at night, during working hours, this was the new wave of street cinema.

Print out the cast lists of those two films. It is a who's who of current French, even international cinema. I hope the fine cast of this Argentine film has such luck, but i doubt it. It is too old a subject.

Just about the only difference between the mood of the Old Paris street and the recent nights in Buenos Aires in this film and in the Paris Left Bank before the invention of the Marais Gay Quarter in the eighties, which killed the Left Bank to a slow death, is the lack of hordes of young people out after midnight.

Having lived that for several years, getting off my job at two a.m. and heading to the Left Bank, I can assure you that the mood, the lives, the people are the same except for the numbers. I guess Time Really Can Stand Still.

There are not really any crowds in this film. There is more loneliness and alienation in it than there was in Paris back then, maybe a lot more heart ache, too. And of course, i am a lot older, like everyone.

But if you love the night, wherever you are, do not miss this Brilliant film.

This film follows Victor, a young man who's making his living on the tough streets of Buenos Aires. The night in question is November 1, all souls eve.

There's the policeman who takes his pay for protection out in trade. There's a private party among some diplomats in a posh hotel suite. And among these we see Victor as he wanders somewhat aimlessly through the occurrences that make up his life. There is some skin appeal in his scenes at a 30th floor health club and later in a 35 Peso a night motel room complete with jacuzzi but overall what we see is much grittier and decidedly less beautiful.

We meet a few of his fellow hustlers and buddies as well as some past tricks and even the homeless street people that Victor associates with.

While well made and generally easy on the eye this movie, like Victor seems aimless and while interesting for what it is, its not something that's easily loved.

Wearing a spotless white shirt and incessantly looking for clients to sell his body or drugs to, Victor strolls through the nights of Buenos Aires, vibrating city it appears to be. "Ronda Nocturna" follows this taxi boy's truly hallucinating trip on All Souls' night. Only a couple of (near imperceptible) slow motions slow down Victor's march.

Backed by Cine Ojo, a production house specialised in documentaries, writer-director Edgardo Cozarinsky tidily portrays Victor and his natural habitat, outcasts of a society that itself is on the edge. Avoiding demagogy or political discourse, Cozarinsky shows the state his native country is in. But not without losing his sense of humour! A hilarious scene in a luxurious building depicts a diplomat, accompanied by a harem of rent boys, who is complaining to a peer about the allowance he is supposed to live on in Switzerland. And of course there is the unforgettable one-night stand with Margaret Thatcher!

But Cozarinsky's major achievement is the subtlety with which he manages to slip a magic atmosphere in this raw-realist character study. Bizarre acts of love, dealing more with Thanatos than with Eros, make Victor doubt. Like vampires, lovers with scars hunger after their beloved. When the November 1st calendar paper is ripped off, the surreal night goes into its final lane. An encounter with an old sweetheart (an impressive Moro Anghileri) confronts Victor with his past –his late youth in the country. He realises that his body is not meant for the things he does with it. At dawn, Victor is a changed man.

Edgardo Cozarinsky is one of Argentina's most respected film makers and this elegiac nocturnal mood piece 'Ronda nocturna' is a stunning little foray into exploring the people who work by night in a big city, that big city could be anywhere in the world. This is not a film for those who need a storyline or those who aren't willing to go with the flow of the mind of the director in mixing the real with the imagined. But for this viewer this is a mesmerizing theme and variations that magnetically draws us into one evening on the calles de Buenos Aires.

Victor (the fine twenty-three year old actor Gonzalo Heredia) is a hustler and works the streets from dusk until dawn, plying his various wares (drugs, his body, his camaraderie) on one particular November evening. He is 'protected' by a police Inspector (Gregory Dayton) in return for physical favors, shares turf with Carlitos (Diego Trerotola) who spends time in clubs with him and takes him to the 'better venues' of his trade including an ambassador's party where Viktor steals money, catches up on old times with a hustler turned taxi driver Mario (Rafael Ferro) with whom cruises the streets in the taxi talking with transvestites and hookers in a series of warm exchanges and whom he beds and has a threatened experience, narrowly escapes death at the push of a strange woman, befriends a street florist, revives an old girlfriend acquaintance....many things happen and nothing really happens. There is no story here except what happens to a pretty kid on the streets; no preaching, no climaxes, no major dramatic turns are developed and we leave Viktor as dawn rises over the city and his working time is over.

The cinematography by Javier Miquelez is brilliant as is the subtle tango-influenced musical score by Carlos Franzetti. Gonzalo Heredia carries this film with sophisticated acting skills and despite the fact that we are never sure just how much of what we are seeing is real, imagined, drug induced, or remembered, we still care deeply for this quiet little charmer of a lad. His moments with the street florist are the stuff of film magic. Edgardo Cozarinsky knows his craft and seeing 'Night Watch' makes us want to explore all of his films. Highly recommended for lovers of art films. Grady Harp

Surely there's a better way to tell this story (there was a story?) that appears to be an attempt to quantify the meaningless of modern life, the regrets that haunt ones memories, and the endless search for something - anything - that may resemble a glimmer of hope. If Aregentina is truly this desperate, humorless and immature, forget about it. I'd rather see a musical version of "Waiting for Godot."

Filled with vague, personal symbols that are probably quite meaningful to the filmmaker, we're constantly baffled by what we're seeing and waiting (for the most part) on something to happen, something that might make us care about the characters, the situation, the plight of "lost" souls. Yet, in the end, we realize that all we've actually been waiting for is the sun to rise and the final credits to roll.

When asked what he thought was the hardest part about making movies, Mel Brooks said it was punching the sprocket holes along the edges of the film. This movie presents us with an alternative answer. The most difficult thing about making a movie is making one that matters.