Benjamín Naishtat: 'We were always talking about Marcelo saying he never gets the main role and he's the best actor of his generation. We said, "Okay, let's write something for him".' Photo: Courtesy of San Sebastian Film Festival
Argentinian comedy Puan follows the life of a college philosophy professor in the wake of the sudden death of his mentor. Marcelo Pena finds himself suddenly vying for the position of department head with an ex-classmate, Rafael Sujarchuk (Leonardo Sbaraglia) fresh back from Germany with show-off streak - not to mention a film star girlfriend - at the same time as trying to navigate life in general. The film employs both physical and philosophical comedy to good effect, including iris shots, which close in on Marcello's face at the end of several scenes. Puan took both the Silver Shell for script and for Acting at San Sebastian and we...
Argentinian comedy Puan follows the life of a college philosophy professor in the wake of the sudden death of his mentor. Marcelo Pena finds himself suddenly vying for the position of department head with an ex-classmate, Rafael Sujarchuk (Leonardo Sbaraglia) fresh back from Germany with show-off streak - not to mention a film star girlfriend - at the same time as trying to navigate life in general. The film employs both physical and philosophical comedy to good effect, including iris shots, which close in on Marcello's face at the end of several scenes. Puan took both the Silver Shell for script and for Acting at San Sebastian and we...
- 10/6/2023
- by Amber Wilkinson
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Anyone familiar with the often disquieting solo work of directors María Alché and Benjamín Naishtat may be put on high uneasiness-alert by the opening scene of “Puan,” their first co-directed feature. Despite the jaunty pop song playing, an older man going for a morning jog in a scrubby Buenos Aires park, suddenly keels over dead of a heart attack. Given the surreal griefscape of Alché’s “A Family Submerged” or the sinister tides of Naishtat’s superb “Rojo”, there’s every possibility that the music is a red herring, and the death portends what is to come. But perhaps that is “Puan”‘s first joke.
In fact, Alché and Naishtat seem to have found the experience of writing together in the captivity of lockdown a liberation of a looser, funnier storytelling mode. What transpires is a fleet-footed if sharply pointed existential-crisis comedy, shot with unobstrusive, naturalistic dynamism by Hélène Louvart,...
In fact, Alché and Naishtat seem to have found the experience of writing together in the captivity of lockdown a liberation of a looser, funnier storytelling mode. What transpires is a fleet-footed if sharply pointed existential-crisis comedy, shot with unobstrusive, naturalistic dynamism by Hélène Louvart,...
- 9/29/2023
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
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