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Martin (Hache) More at IMDbPro »Martín (Hache) (original title)

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20 reviews in total

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13 out of 13 people found the following review useful:
superb, 29 August 2003

Author: kinolieber

Wonderful film that sadly was not released in the U.S. Beautifully written and acted character-driven piece about many things, among them the role of a parent in our modern civilization - and the role of the child as well; the relationships between men and women, and the friendships between straight men and gay men; the role of artistic expression in the lives of artists and in the lives of those who will never be artists. The film is also noteworthy for its portrayal of the hypocrisy of adults who impose upon their children "values" that they themselves reject in their day-to-day lives. The gay character is refreshingly unapologetic. And the female lead is heartbreakingly real, a brilliant and deeply moving performance by Cecilia Roth. If you ever get a chance to see this film, I highly recommend it.

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13 out of 15 people found the following review useful:
Perfect, 7 August 2005

Author: Anxa PV from Spain

This is one of my favorite films.

Terribly sincere, talks about relationships and silence, about how doubts and questions not answered can turn love in death or slow suicide and about how everything comes to pain.

But is not a sad story at the end. The role of young Martín (Hache), perfect and tender Juan Diego Botto, as the real survivor of the script, turning sour into sweetness, and insecurity into strenght, even though he's lost in hesitations, is a message of faith in life.

The dialogs are intelligent and sharp, the actors, gorgeous. And I fell in love with Martín (Hache) for the rest of my life.

Thank you, Adolfo Aristarain for such a great, sensitive, risky and intelligent movie and thank you, Federico Lupi, Cecilia Roth, Eusebio Poncela and, specially, Juan Diego Botto for your incredible work.

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10 out of 11 people found the following review useful:
Once in a life time, 18 May 1999

Author: Ernesto Treviño from Mexico City, Mexico

Once or twice in a lifetime you watch a movie that strikes you exactly in the moment when you need it, and you feel completely identified with it. That happened to me today when I saw Martín (Hache), commenting on movies is a very subjective thing to do, you can like a movie even if it's a flick just because you needed someone to tell you what the movie is saying in that exact moment. Anyway, that's what this movie is about; reflection and not only for young people also for adults.

This movie has lots of social and political opinions in between lines, it's a perfect mirror of the society we live in but it doesn't give a point of view that's what's great about it!, it keeps itself objective. Like Dante would say about drugs, they make everything relative the only truth is your truth, Post-modernism!, XX Century!, there aren't any more rules to obey, society is rotten and it's a dream to try and change it, so you might as well adapt and enjoy the "good" things about life.

After you see this movie I really hope you question yourself, what is the meaning of "good". Everything is relative, remember?

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7 out of 7 people found the following review useful:
Feed your brain, 7 August 2006

Author: olivercabo from Barcelona

When you see four times a film and you discover new contents each time, evidence: this piece is worth-. I see my own evolution with this movie, my opinion growing, I notice concepts I hadn't before.

Martin (Hache) talks about life through incredibly deep characters, specially Martin (father), whose very balanced but also extremely dark side drives spectator into a superior intellectual world, in which you are overwhelmed by messages, looks, behaviors, feelings.

All actors are superb, there is a maximum connection with their characters, you forget you are in front of a TV, flowing in the story like a fish in the water, even understanding both sides of all the great and rich arguments they have. Everything is valuable, don't miss a minute!

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7 out of 7 people found the following review useful:
Well-made dialogue-driven piece, 17 February 2002

Author: Keith F. Hatcher from La Rioja, Spain

At times I felt this film might have been adapted from stage-theatre, so good are the dialogues; scintillating, the right way to speak Spanish – if you will excuse the `porteño' accent so very necessary for the film. The old `maestro' Federico Luppi is about as good as in any other film I have seen him in, I suppose; Juan Diego de Botto is better than in other films of his that I have seen; but the real standing ovation is for Eusebio Ponce who plays very delicately and intelligently the philosophical homosexual, and Cecilia Roth is outstanding as the film-director's girl-friend. Though I must say that I am beginning to get accustomed to Cecilia Roth being outstanding in everything she does.

The direction is right – spot on; tight, befitting the excellent playing out of the dialogues and demanding great skill with the camera and later the person with the scissors. Adolfo Arastarain worked hard for this one: the result is a hugely satisfying piece.

Once again, as erstwhile said elsewhere in IMDb, for those who like real character-driven pieces with intelligent dialogues, this film is highly recommendable. However, for those of you with a fair knowledge of Spanish, if you are not used to the Argentinian (porteño) accent you may well have problems, such that you will need the subtitles. It is worth the effort, I can assure you: just over 8 out of 10, which is pretty high on my scale.

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8 out of 9 people found the following review useful:
Ensemble Film-making at its Finest, 9 November 2006

Author: gradyharp from United States

Adolfo Aristarain is one of those rare filmmakers who defines his own world in cinema by writing and directing terrific stories with brilliant dialogue and using a familiar cadre of actors who give the finished product an ensemble effort. He is one of Argentina's finest artists and couples frequently with writer Kathy Saavedra (Roma, Un lugar en el mundo, Lugares communes, Martín (Hache), etc) and elects to use the extraordinary actors from Argentina such as Federico Luppi. Cecilia Roth, Juan Diego Botta and Eusebio Poncela. The results are stunning motion pictures that while addressing the intellect of the audience never fail to entertain as well.

'Martín (Hache)' is just such a film. With a challenging and wise script and a cadre of fine actors in every role Aristarain has created a poignant, philosophical and superlative character study about people and their need for relating in the world as we have altered it today. Martín (the brilliant Federico Luppi) is a wealthy writer who left his family in Buenos Aires five years ago to live and work in Madrid. He has a nineteen year old son Hache (Juan Diego Botta) - Hache is the Spanish pronunciation for the alphabet letter 'J' and since the son's name is Martin J. he elects to be called J or Hache - who is a restless, foundationless teenager who refuses to go to school preferring to simply play his electric guitar and run with the drug crowd. His mother has remarried and has a new baby and Hache is feeling like a third wheel. He accidentally overdoses on alcohol and drugs during a performance, collapses, and his mother notifies Martín that Hache has attempted suicide to induce Martín to return to Buenos Aires and take back his son Hache. Hache of course recovers and his mother insists that Hache is in the way and that he must go to Madrid to live with Martín: Martín begrudgingly agrees.

In Madrid, Martín has been living the life of a recluse whose only contacts are his squeeze Alicia (Cecilia Roth, an actress of limitless talent), who escapes her life by an addiction to coke but loves Martín, and his best friend the bisexual actor Dante (Eusebio Poncela) who is an Epicurean living all aspects of life for the pleasures he finds. Once Hache has moved in with his distant, cold, sullen father he falls under the influence of Alicia and Dante who adore him and attempt to show him a life of sunshine in Madrid while Martín sequesters himself in his writing. How this unlikely quartet interacts, bouncing the Apollonian against the Dionysian poles of living forms the basis for the story. Hache grows to understand the spectrum of worldviews, a tragedy occurs, and the ongoing silent duel between the father and the son comes to a touching resolution.

Hearing and watching this quartet of brilliant actors is not unlike attending a performance of a fine string quartet. Aristarain keeps the long film (two hours +) moving in such a beautifully liquid flow that the story seems to take moments. But the moments are all treasures, the result of the ensemble of writing, directing, and acting. 'Martín (Hache)' is simply a brilliant film. In Spanish with English subtitles. Grady Harp

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6 out of 6 people found the following review useful:
Giants at work, 30 June 2006

Author: joalogon (joalogon@yahoo.es) from Spain

Aristarain strikes back again.

After the beautiful "Un lugar en el mundo", he gives us this film which is nearly a theater work.

He repeats with two beasts of Argentinian's cinema. Cecilia Roth (whom half the Spanish talking world has been in love with), and one of the five best actors of all times, FEDERICO LUPPI.

It's impossible not to think about my own father seeing his personage, with this overwhelming love for his son and yet unable to communicate with. Maybe I've seen it over five times, and still I cry each time when Federico Luppi stands on the balcony talking about the desperation of life after the idea of loosing his son misunderstood. It's the nearest you will get to understand fatherly love if you don't yet have a baby.

The plot is banal, and the filming nothing complicated, just a camera fixed to let all the attention to actors........but then, the hit. What an acting!!!!!. You hardly are going to see something similar, Luppi is a monster, a giant, he fills the screen with a strength rarely seen away.

A must see in Spanish, where you can really judge their beautiful work. The pity is that it would surprise me a lot if the titles are able to reproduce all that complicated and quick talking.

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6 out of 6 people found the following review useful:
Why is growing-up such a pain?, 26 March 2005

Author: benjaminredcloud from Italy

Heche (which means letter H) is a nineteen year old boy that nobody wants. After his parents' divorce, his mother's got a new life in Argentina, and there's no place for him. After he survives an 'accident' that is believed by everyone as an attempted suicide, his mother asks his father to take care of him. His father agrees, even if he still does not think he has a place for his son. Only his father's woman and his best friend, an homosexual drug addict, show affection for this boy who is lost and can't find a way to really grow up and become independent.

Being raised in a family of people who flew Argentina before I was born, I was used, kind of, to the heavy Argentinian accent that the actors have, Federico Luppi especially. However, I agree it might be difficult for other Spanish speaking people who are used to a more 'orthodox' Spanish to understand parts of the dialogs, which is a shame. Dialogues are what makes this film so interesting and touching. The things that are said contrast with the things that remained unsaid, and you can only imagine by reading the character's eyes. Alicia, for example, is almost always laughing and having fun, but her eyes are dark, worried. Her happiness is just a mask she wears to avoid realize how much she feels bad about what she is missing for, a real family, with children. She only tells Hache about that, she wishes she were his mother. Hache apparently is resigned to being a nuisance for his parents, but he wants to escape this situation by living alone, even though he's not ready yet. He uses drugs and only his father's best friend manages to keep him away from danger.

The two main actors were great. Federico Luppi's portrayal of a father who is very disappointed for his son's way of life was so real I wanted to kick him! Juan Diego Botto was perfect, too. You could think he was portraying himself. I wonder if it's a pity he lives in Spain and his works are not known across the Atlantic Ocean, nor east of the Pirineos.

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3 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
there is much more than couldn't be said, 21 March 2007
Author: hamletkronprinz from United States

On this movie,or IN this movie is not the acting-intense-and it is not the dialogs-piercing-or the camera,filming,sound,etc.techs..It's the everyone watching and missing,quiet in guilts of no participation,like the Eusebio Poncella's Dante playing a Russian revolutionary remarks as he stops acting in the play in the film and sacrifices his career for some much urgent and realist play to the benefit of his protégée. What this movie is calling to watch is not its own show,but a reaction from the silent,passive,inmature in all of us.Egoist parent,petrified males,desperated women,flashed out gaybombs,and scared youths,not to be any of these ways but the opposite,our gentler selves. Our own movie to make,is compared to this one,like the messaged one by the boy of the title to his "profesional" father,the gone losing... A great mirror on a shattering real World.Seldom so well done the real duty of a Play.As Dali used to say,a piece of Art must not only entertain but must definitely provoke disturbing.

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3 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
The best in Argentine cinema, 24 May 2006

Author: osvaldovazquez from Mexico

This movie has the quality that not even Hollywood films got its based on the truth that most people will not even want to see on your regular day drug abuse, depression, selfish parents, friendship, love ,lust and people like you and me. Martin or Jay as he is called is a teenager from Buenos Aires, Argentina that overdosed himself with certain drugs for dogs then his father who lives in Spain comes worried to see him takes his son back to Spain (against his own will). the problem with Martin, H or Jay how he is called its that they don't get along at all except for Dante whom he is Martin's father best friend (best actor Eusebio Poncela). Dante a homosexual who lives in a hotel talks to Martin about every subject that not all friends will talk to one about(homosexuality, friendship, drugs, love, living up to be yourself). Then there's Cecilia Roth who plays the role of ALICIA the mistress of Martin Sr a classy performance on her part. I give this a 10 out of 10 right up there with NUEVE REYNAS.

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