Album Reviews
Movies
Concert Reviews
Movie Resources
Concert Reviews
Book Reviews

Top 10
Resources
Contact Us

In our overly sexualized culture, the word 'intimate' often refers to something romantic or even illicit. That's probably what New Yorker Films hoped to convey to unsuspecting moviegoers when they changed the title of their latest movie to Intimate Stories. In this case, though, there isn't any sex involved and little romance to speak of, and yet the phrase "Intimate Stories" feels right. For this Argentinean film is about the small details of our lives--the short journeys we take and the people we meet along the way. It's intimate in the way a car conversation can be intimate.

Car conversations make up a significant part of the movie, which focuses on three people who are all taking a trip to the city of San Julian. The primary character is Don Justo (Antonio Benedecti), an old man who hears that his long-lost dog might be alive in that town a few hours away. Don Justo owns a store in the middle of nowhere that caters to passing truckers, but his son and daughter-in-law treat him like a child. He broaches the idea of going to San Julian to look for the dog, and they laugh it off. But Don Justo is not one to be mocked, so he wakes up one morning and starts hitchhiking. Maria Flores (Javiera Bravo) is a young mother living in the same middle-of-nowhere, who hears one day that she might have won a prize on a tv game show. To find out, she has to travel to San Julian and compete with two other contestants, so she takes her baby and hops on a bus. Finally, there's Roberto (Javier Lombardo), an enthusiastic salesperson, who drives through small towns of Argentina convincing stores to carry a weight-loss product. At first, it appears that he'll be the annoying voice of hard-sell capitalism, but his storyline quickly shifts away from his job to a hoped-for romance with a young widow he's met in San Julian. The widow's child is celebrating a birthday, and Roberto has custom-ordered a cake for the occasion.

To say that not much happens in Intimate Stories would be both true and irrelevant. The movie doesn't really care whether Don Justo finds his dog or Maria wins her prize (though both storylines are nicely resolved). In fact, the only conflict in the narrative occurs when Roberto suddenly realizes that he doesn't know whether the widow's child is a boy or girl, and so he's not sure if the soccer ball-shaped cake is appropriate. Rather, the film (beautifully written by Pablo Solarz) is about hospitality, about the people we meet as we're traveling through life. When a young woman named Julia (Argentinean director Julia Solomonoff) picks up the hitch-hiking Don Justo, their conversations about life and health are much more important than whether he'll eventually locate his pet. And the gender of the widow's child is revealed as an afterthought, but the encounters Roberto has with various bakers form a central theme of the narrative. As one of my favorite songs reminds me, "There is a joy in the journey," and what we see (and learn) along the way is usually more significant than where or when we arrive.

It helps that Carlos Sorin directs all of this with a light touch. The three plot threads are gracefully arranged, so that we easily move from one to the other and back again. If the one about Maria Flores doesn't get as much screentime, it does have the advantage of re-appearing at just the right moments. And the film has charm to spare, so that we can forgive the corny scenes when Roberto starts singing "Strangers in the Night" and when our three protagonists coincidentally cross paths. Cinematographer Hugo Colace (La Cienaga) adds to the film's beauty by utilizing space in striking ways and capturing rural Argentina in gorgeous landscape shots. That the entire film seems to take place in the "magic light" hours before sunset is a narrative incongruity worth overlooking.

A better translation of the movie's original title ("Historias minimas") would be Minimal Stories. But I like the connotation of Intimate Stories. Small and heartfelt, quiet and honest, it's a film worth going out of your way to see. It's currently playing at the Music Box theater.  

J. Robert Parks  7/24/2005