Balnearios

Argentinean Film Critics Association Awards Year Result Award Category/Recipient(s) 2003 Won Silver Condor Best Argentinean Video Film (Mejor Videofilm Argentino) Mariano Llinás This movie is a documentary about "balnearios". I don't know the exact translation to english, but they're tourism towns or little cities by the seacoast, or near some water fountain. The movie shows the singularity of these places and how people enjoy them. The movie don't want to show big places but little ones. It's centered in margins, in little tourism places, almost without people living there. The life in these places is narrated in detail, with an external yet friendly look. It's divided in 4 episodes. After a melancholic introduction that relates how the 'balnearios' that born in a different time, compulsorily (and not gracefully) had to adapt to the pass of time, the first episodes begins, telling a mystic crime story in an old hotel, leaving me thinking if every little town has its epic tragedy, its own legend. The second episode is the heart of the movie, and its about the contrast between the season and the out-of-season, the unexplainable customs of the tourists, about the people at the 'balnearios' in general. It is narrated very gracefully. The people laughed a lot in the cinema. The third episode is the shorter and the worst, IMO. Tell the story of Miramar, a town on the seacoast that is half flooded, the streets finishing under the sea. The fourth episode is about 'balnearios' on river coasts, little lagoons, or dikes, and it's centered in Zucco, an amateur painter(His personality remains me to Ed Wood) that paint the 'balneario' where he lives. He has written down and stored every dream he had. He talks with Neptune. The episode tells a 'balneario'-related dream he had once, his thoughts, and show some of his work. This episode is maybe too long, but funny. And it shows the spirit of these different 'balnearios', too.