Las mantenidas sin sueños (2005)

User Rating:

7.3/10   

Directors:

Martín De Salvo
Vera Fogwill

Writers:

Martín De Salvo (writer)
Vera Fogwill (writer)

Release Date:

15 October 2005 (Netherlands)

Genre:

Comedy | Drama

Plot:

Florence, a young irresponsible mother & and her precocious daughter, Eugenia, have an unusual relationship...

Plot Keywords:

Mother Daughter Relationship | Drug Use | Dysfunctional Family | Family Relationships | Single Mother

Awards:

10 wins & 3 nominations

Cast

Vera Fogwill	...	Florencia
Lucia Snieg	...	Eugenia
Mirta Busnelli	...	Sara
Edda Díaz	...	Olga
Gastón Pauls	...	Martín
Mía Maestro	...	Celina
Julián Krakov	...	Santiago
Elsa Berenguer	...	Lola
Nicolás Condito	...	Octavio
Pablo Ini

Also Known As:

Kept and Dreamless (International: English title)

Runtime:

Brazil:94 min | Argentina:97 min

Country:

Argentina | France | Netherlands | Spain

Language:

Spanish

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

Netherlands:12 | Argentina:16

Filming Locations:

Buenos Aires, Federal District, Argentina

Company:

Avalon Productions

Trivia:

Argentina's entry for 2006 Golden Globes Awards for the category of Best Foreign Language Film.

Soundtrack:

Las Mantenidas sin sueños

That's not sugar

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

A bad mother forgets birthdays. A really bad mother goes to the junkyard for your belated gift. It's always an unhappy birthday when your mom is a drug addict. Call it luck of the draw, the womb you're in, and Eugenia(Lucia Sneig) lucked out when the doctor cut the cord, stuck as she is with Florencia(Vera Fogwell), a once-promising med student, who now can't ever remember to keep her daughter home from school on a national holiday. On Eugenia's special day, Florencia somehow manages to stand on her own two feet long enough to wrangle a cat from the dump. The little girl is mad. She wants a store-bought cat. She wants mom to be sober. But Eugenia accepts the cat, accepts her disappointing mom, even though it's very likely that her arms and legs will soon be covered with flea bites, or worse.

In "Kept and Dreamless", we often see Florencia in a drug-addled state, but the film shies away from showing us the process. Nobody expects this slice-of-life melodrama from Argentinia to be graphic in its detailing of a junkie's relationship with his/or her paraphernalia like Darin Aronofsky's "Requeim for a Dream", but since the life of a little girl almost comes to a horrific end, "Kept and Dreamless" should have the honesty to depict drug use without any heightening, or irony. But the scene in question, if you take measure of the circumstances, seems highly unlikely. Living in a house that doubles as a domesticated drug den, Eugenia is no ordinary nine-year-old girl. She should be able to differentiate cocaine from powdered sugar. Eugenia drinks the iced tea laced with the narcotic before she spits it out. A child raised in a home where drugs are present isn't that naive. The filmmaker simply wants to startle us without thinking the scene all the way through.

"Kept and Dreamless" suffers from being too schematic, therefore, not especially realistic about drug addiction. When it's convenient to the narrative, Florencia gets her s*** together and manages to hold a job that requires her to clean the home of a wealthy childhood friend. "Kept and Dreamless" glosses over the recovery period, in which an addict like Florencia would need to clean up her act, and jumps ahead to her life as a functional housekeeper. Because the filmmaker never shows us any needles, or white lines on a glass surface, the transition that Florencia undergoes is easier to accept. Sara(Mirta Busnelli) hires her former classmate more as an ego trip, than out of friendship. But the high school rivals join forces to berate Florencia's mom for putting undue pressure on her daughter to become a doctor, when the old woman visits Sara's palacial home. Florencia gets a free pass. Mom is to blame for all her f***-ups. Florencia doesn't earn our sympathies honestly, and nothing is resolved, since "Kept and Dreamless" ends with Eugenia's visit to her father's house.