Clandestine Childhood

It's 1979, Argentina. 12 year old Juan and his family returns after their exile in Cuba. They are guerrillas hunted by the military junta. Juan hides his true identity to everyone including his friends at school where they know him as Ernesto.

It's an Argentinian film with the potential of compelling characters. For a film of paranoia, we need to feel it much more. The filmmaking style is slow paced. It needs a lot more energy, and I'm not advocating some big action scene. There's got to be more intensity in this story.

The kids do good work. I like their characters. Their scenes have the intensity I'm talking about. I actually think the adults don't contribute as much. This feels like a lesser 'Running on Empty'. I do like the animation to break up some of the violence. It works well as from a child's point of view. Overall it tells an interesting story.

A film on Argentine military dictatorship and dirty war of fascists against Montonero guerrilla is always welcome, as it is a quite important even in the history of Latin America and in the dire days of reactionary oppession against democracy and human rights. Making a film on a military dictatorship focusing the life of a child is also a script decision that often works very well, as I may mention Brazilian "O ano em que meus pais saíram de férias" ("The Year My Parents Went on Vacation"), Argentine "Kamchatka", and Nicaraguan "Princesas rojas" ("Red Princesses"). This Argentine film is not bad and it is visually appealing: cinematography, art direction, the usage of drawn animation... However (and unfortunately), it is too tepid, excessively long and sluggish, and lacks a tighter script. Spectator never gets involved, the movie simply does not make specttor feels or velieves in what is portrayed on the screen.

A totally dramatic, deep and emotional film, I highly recommend it.

When we see this movie, we start to think: what kind of people voluntarily put their own children in the middle of a dirty war?? What kind of fanaticism produces people like these? Unfortunately that kind of "leftist" fanaticism of the 1970's is somehow being replaced by other kinds of fanaticism so many innocent "idealists" keep falling for the sake of "ideas", ideologies or religions. In the middle of that craziness the only sane voice seems to be the kid's grandmother. But nevertheless, despite the sad story (the world is full of sad stories, isn't it?), this movie is very well realized and the acting, direction and editing are very good. The idea of using drawings to replace certain violent scenes was already used before in an Israeli movie but nevertheless was very well done.

I stumbled across this during quarantine and I'm really glad I did. It was not what I expected, but often times thats a good thing and this film was no exception. If you can get by the political aspects of the film, something I try to do, and just watch it for the story and archs of the characters, it is quite powerful. If you choose to research the political aspects of the film, I encourage you to do so. I'm not going to single out any performances as they were good-not great- however they were more than enough to fuel this magnificent script. I'll mark the production value with the same mark as the cast, but again, more than enough there to carry you on this journey. You will cry, you will cheer, the absence of either would make me question your humanity. Give it a go!