Category Archives: Argentina

Movie: Evita (1996)

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Because this movie that premiered in 1996 was nominated for several Academy Awards (won Best Original Song) and Madonna who played Eva Peron (Evita) won the Golden Globe for Best Actress, it got some recognition, but no one has ever recommended this movie to me in the 16 years it has been out. I watched this movie without any expectations, and was really pleasantly surprised. It is a wonderful movie. It may be too obvious, but what was most wonderful was Madonna’s skill as a singer. However, interestingly, Madonna tried very hard to market herself for the role of the protagonist Eva, but the movie company was uninterested, and the producer continued searching for another actress. In the end, no other actress was available, and it is said they reluctantly settled on Madonna for the role of Eva. However, I believe no other actress could have done as magnificent of a performance of Eva as Madonna did. I will state the reasons.

First of all, since it is a musical, the woman playing Eva must be a singer who can act, or an actress who can sing. The three components of entertainment are singing, dancing, and acting; but in the politics of American show business, singing and acting have absolute authority, and dancing is politically weak. Therefore, Natalie Portman who made use of a stunt ballerina was given an Academy Award, while Audrey Hepburn who had a voice dubbed over her for the songs in My Fair Lady was not even a candidate for an Academy Award. Conversely, Reese Witherspoon (Walk the Line) and Sissy Spacek (as Loretta in Coal Miner’s Daughter) sang in their roles and easily won the Academy Award. This shows that one’s ability as a singer is respected in Hollywood and Broadway.

Second, since this movie depicts Eva when she was in her 20s, a woman in her 20s or possibly early 30s is preferable in order to be able to do camera close-ups, and for it to seem realistic. Because stage actress Patti LuPone—who was the performer of Eva in Evita on Broadway at that time—was 47 when this movie was being made, it is said that she was offered the role of, not Eva, but rather Eva’s elderly mother!!! It goes without saying that Patti declined the offer.

Third, to play Eva, the actress had to be incredibly beautiful, elegant, ambitious, and have a tough and intense presence that didn’t shrink when she stepped onto the outdoor balcony from where she addressed a large crowd. This might be a little too difficult for an actress in her 20s.

This is the list of actresses that the director and producer seriously negotiated with:

Meryl Streep. She was in her mid-40s when this movie was being made.
Liza Minnelli. Three years older than Meryl Streep.
Barbara Streisand. Four years older than Liza Minnelli.
Cher. The same age as Liza Minnelli.
Glenn Close. Two years older than Meryl Streep.
Olivia Newton-John. One year older than Meryl Streep.
Michelle Pfeiffer. The same age as Madonna. They were both in their mid-30s at the time of filming.

Therefore, Madonna and Michelle Pfeiffer were the only ones that satisfied the second criteria; the decision was between the singer Madonna, who could act reasonably well but had charisma, and the lovely Michelle, who was decent at singing but had a reputation as a skilled actor. It was the difference in motivations between the two that became the decisive factor. At that time, Michelle Pfeiffer was starting to enjoy the life of being married and raising kids, and she didn’t want to go to the set in Argentina, even though the staff had gone through great efforts to get the rights to shoot in the official residence where Eva had lived. Even in her personal life, Michelle Pfeiffer exudes a feeling of contentment with her blessed life that has everything she needs. After all, no actress would be better than go-getter Madonna to play as the ambitious Eva. Her singing is wonderful, but also her dancing splendidly captures the essence of tango.

Also, the singing and dancing of Antonio Banderas, in the role of the narrator who looks like Che Guevara, is wonderful. He sings and dances naturally without being arrogant about his skill.

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Person: President Juan Perón (1895-1974)

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It is easy to be confused about who was the wife of Juan Perón, who was elected as the President of Argentina in 1946. The reason is that there were actually two women who were known as Perón’s wife.

The first time he was elected as president, Perón fought the electoral campaign alongside Eva, a former actress, and he married her after being elected. Eva is depicted as the female protagonist in the Broadway musical Evita, and was deeply loved by the people of Argentina. Eva had the ambition to become Perón’s vice president, but in the end due to cancer, she died in 1952 at the young age of 33 without fulfilling her ambition. Argentina, having stayed neutral in World War II, accumulated wealth from selling food to both sides, and Perón distributed this wealth to the labor unions that supported him, gaining overwhelming support from the working class; however, after the war, once America and Canada recovered and entered the food export market, Argentina’s trading suddenly stagnated. After the death of charismatic and popular Eva, Perón faced increasing criticism, and with the naval coup d’état of 1955, Perón was forced to flee the country. The country he took refuge in was Spain, which was under the dictatorship of Generalísimo Franco. The musical Evita was made into a movie, and the singer Madonna performed as Eva.

While Perón was in exile in Spain, he married again to a nightclub singer, Isabel. Even after Perón’s exile, Perón supporters remained strongly influential in the politics of Argentina, and in the midst of a violent opposition between the left and right wings, Perón was invited back to Argentina as the only possible politician who could resolve this opposition; after returning to his home country, he was elected as president for the second time. Perón appointed his wife Isabel as his Vice President, but one year later, he suddenly died in 1974. After Perón’s death, Isabel was promoted to President, but the country was incredibly unstable, and Isabel relentlessly imprisoned and killed antigovernment groups and human rights activists. Due to a coup d’état led by an army officer—Jorge Rafael Videla—in 1976, Isabel was overthrown, and she took refuge in Spain. President Videla also kidnapped, tortured, and killed political opponents, human rights activists, and others. These times are called the “Dirty War.” An excellent Argentinean movie that indirectly depicts this period is The Secret in Their Eyes.

Máxima Zorreguieta—the daughter of Jorge Zorreguieta, who was a cabinet member of the Videla administration—fell in love with the Netherlands’ crown prince, Willem-Alexander; the Dutch were very opposed to their prince marrying the daughter of a government official involved in a massacre, but since Maxima’s father Zorreguieta was proved to have had no direct involvement in the massacre, Máxima and Willem-Alexander were able to officially get engaged in 2001, and they married the next year in 2002. Argentina and Europe, which appear to be distant, are actually quite connected.

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Movie: The Women on the 6th Floor — Les Femmes du 6ème étage (2011)

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This movie that I casually chose without knowing anything about was such an enjoyable one!! The story, images, actors, and the conversations within this movie were delicious, and I got hungry watching it.

It is Paris in the 1960s. Poor Spanish women under Franco’s oppression in Spain moved to Paris to live as maids for wealthy French people. These women earn what money they can in a foreign country to support their poor family back home, and return to their home country if they are able to save up enough money. They nostalgically think about their family they left back home, the relationships with other villagers, the warmth spreading through the air, and foods that they often ate; fellow Spanish maids in Paris help each other, go to church every Sunday, and look forward to the day they can finally return home. However, even if they miss their hometown, a few made up their mind to not return unless the reign of terror of Franco ended.

Maria is a young, beautiful, intelligent, pious, and capable Spanish maid. She is the favorite of her affluent landlord employer and his wife, but as the story develops, it becomes clear there is something hidden within Maria. Because the landlord’s wife rose to the upper class from being a poor country girl through marriage, she doesn’t have self-confidence and she tries very hard to assimilate into the superficial high society of Paris. Her husband had everything he could want—wealth, job, family—and thought he was satisfied with life, until he met Maria.

I don’t write here what happens to the two people because it is a spoiler. The landlord married his current wife without having given it much thought because, even though he is the son of a rich family, he had a feeling of being cramped in the upper class and felt more comfortable with a woman from the countryside. Maria was born with elegance and a strong mind, and is a woman who truly has the self-confidence to not feel inferior to others, even with a difference in social class. Maria is the kind of person who can make herself and the person she loves happy, while the landlord is actually quite gracious if need be when it comes to letting go of extra things, and as a viewer, I find myself wishing that the landlord and Maria somehow find happiness.

Natalia Verbeke who played Maria has a small face and good posture, somehow like a ballerina. This actress met the director’s strict standards of, “Maria must be beautiful, but not too beautiful.” Verbeke was born in Argentina in 1975, but because of the oppressive politics during the “Dirty War” when she was a child, she and her family fled Argentina and moved to Spain.

This is a digression, but Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris was another movie set in Paris released around the same time. In Allen’s movie, every scene seems to be a typical picture postcard, and by pasting all of these picture postcard scenes together, he is trying to paint Paris with brute force; but the movie shows his same New Yorker mentality and it lacks the true smells and essence of life in Paris. In contrast, The Women on the 6th Floor is set in Paris, but does not show any typical Paris scenery. For the migrant Spanish worker, most of what is seen is her working place, the market, the church, and her own loft. Living in Paris doesn’t mean visiting all the places for tourists. The lives of Maria and her friends are made up by their surroundings, and I think they really live in Paris, even though they are there just for a short time.

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Movie: El secreto de sus ojos – The Secret in Their Eyes (2009)

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This well-made Argentinean movie received the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2009.

This movie switches between modern day Argentina (the early 2000s) and 25 years ago (the 1970s). When President Peron—who was overwhelmingly popular with the people of Argentina, particularly the working class—died suddenly due to heart disease in 1974, his wife Isabel succeeded him as President and aggressively oppressed opposing groups. She was ousted by a coup d’etat by General Videla and, when Videla became President, the oppression and massacres of opposing groups grew worse. Thus, internal turmoil called the “Dirty War” broke out in Argentina. This movie does not directly depict this situation, but it wouldn’t be possible to understand this movie without knowing this social background.

The theme that persists in this movie is something like, “The only thing that doesn’t change in a man is his passion.” Benjamín, a Buenos Aires criminal trial investigator, was assigned 25 years earlier to investigate the murder of a bank employee’s young wife; he sees a hint of dangerous passion hidden in the eyes of a young man always photographed together with the victim. The reason he noticed it is that he himself always gazed at his beautiful boss Irene with a passion hidden within his eyes. The man in the photo is the suspect, but where is he hiding? Benjamín’s assistant explains to Benjamín, “The only thing that doesn’t change in a man is his passion,” and the two successfully arrest the suspect based on this theory.

However, Benjamín and his beautiful boss Irene who believes in him are forced to release the suspect, amongst the political instability and corruption mentioned above. Danger approaches the life of Benjamín who earnestly conducted the investigation. Irene who is from an upper class family is safe, but Benjamín must leave Buenos Aires to protect himself.

25 years later, society now stabilized, a middle-aged Benjamín visits Buenos Aires to follow up on the murder case of the young wife that closed 25 years earlier and to see Irene who has been promoted to a judge. Beautiful as ever, Irene welcomes Benjamín with a warm and loving heart. Benjamín wants to know about the husband who did everything he could do to find and prosecute his wife’s murderer. How did he overcome the pain of losing his wife? And what is the murderer doing today? Is he still alive somewhere? Or did he already die? The key for solving the mystery is again the theme, “The only thing that doesn’t change in a man is his passion.” Abiding by these words, Benjamin unexpectedly discovers the lives of the bank employee husband and the murderer. And he discovers his desire for Irene that has remained in his heart.

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