Movies into Film
Hístorias Minimas/Minimal Stories
Directed by Carlos Sorin
Argentina, 2002
Sitcom del Sud
The problems of Hístorias Minimas begin with the title’s transliteration into Minimal Stories, a moniker destined to keep English-speaking audiences away in droves. It’s just as well. The director Carlos Sorin and the scenarist Pablo Solarz take endless potshots at the vulgarity of television (trotting out trashy game shows as well as graphic surgical depictions) although their own film is scarcely better. Sorin’s camera work consists of too many tightly held close-ups; and his notion of irony necessitates a traveling salesman punch his fist through a cake, after spying the woman he pines for escorted by another man, a man who turns out to be her brother.
The movie’s other major caricature is an old timer named Justo, who hitchhikes hundreds of miles in search of a dog whom he calls Badface; this is the film’s real love story. When Badface finally ambles into view, he’s a sweet pooch, and we’re flooded with sentimental feeling between dog and man. If Hístorias Minimas were content to follow the peregrinations of Justo and Badface—a sort of Patagonian Umberto D—the movie might have been bearable or even good, the way a canine licking your face is sometimes good. – NPT
May 2003
Movies into Film
© N.P. Thompson, 2004
npt [at] moviesintofilm [dot] com