Family Law

Here's the best antidote for Borat, a feather-light comedy about families pervaded by good taste, good manners, and mutual understanding.

Family Law (Derecho de familia) is an Argentinean film centered on an impeccable young man with a certain reserve. He sleeps in his suit – or so his wife, Sandra (Julieta Díaz) puts it. Actually he's in his shirt and tie by then. This is Ariel Perelman, or Perelman Junior (Daniel Hendler). When his son, Gastón (Eloy Burman), has a show at his kindergarten, which is Swiss but rather off-puttingly touchy-feely and New Age for his taste, Perelman promises to do the costumes, and he does. He dresses all the children in little dark suits and ties.

This is a film that establishes its world most ably, and focuses on helping us understand how that world works. To formulate the guiding point of view, there is Junior's voice-over.

Perelman is comfortable in his life, doing things his own way. (The film teaches us to be comfortable with him too.) He courts his future wife, who's a Pilates instructor in Buenos Aires, by having her instruct him. His father Bernardo, or Perelman Senior (Arturo Goetz), is a trial lawyer who keeps a professional witness on call, while Perelman Junior, who lectures on the law, has an associate "interrupt" his lectures to make points. Perelman Junior is on a state salary, while his more prepossessing father is a well known barrister. When reconstruction of the building gives Junior a couple of months off, he doesn't tell his wife; but he does spend more time with little Gastón when Sandra goes to Machu Pichu for a Pilates conference, her first time away since the birth of the little boy. (Junior's somewhat exploratory free-floating status resembles that of the main character in the Chilean Alicia Scherson's terrific movie, Play, who also is having time off work but says nothing about it.)

Junior and his wife are a typical Argentinean Jewish-Catholic couple he says. It's not a big deal. But maybe that's the film's greatest accomplishment, again with a light touch: this unceremonious installation of Jewishness in a Latin American setting.

Perelman Senior is more outgoing than his son, a man of the old school, charming, known by everybody, an individual of regular routines who has coffee and a croissant before he talks to anybody, and meets with clients in restaurants so they'll be more relaxed. He's on a retainer to some clients, such as an Italian restaurateur always in trouble with the Health Department. And he's a widower with a secretary of a certain age (Adriana Aizemberg) to whom he is close. Perelman Senior has a secret, and at the end we find out what it is.

Meanwhile, Perelman Senior has a birthday. Everyone seems to know about it but Perelman Junior. One of his father's cronies sees that the son doesn't embarrass himself. The men grow a bit closer, but Perelman Junior doesn't understand why. For all his distance and his reserve, he's charming with little Gastón (also a charmer), and his intimate moments with Sandra feel perfectly right. Burman is wonderful at avoiding clichés and sentimentality, while talking about the sort of things that attract those defects.

Family Law is about the basic things, families, generations, lifestyles, attitudes. Director Daniel Burman is uniquely benign and his humor is of the most gentle, ironic, subtle kind.The sensibility is suavely European – western European, perhaps Mediterranean (and perhaps typically Argentinean Jewish-Catholic). It may be making gentle fun of the Argentinean preoccupation with appearances. Like good Italians – and Italian influence in the country, I hear, is not negligible – the people in Family Law avoid "facendo brutta figura" (looking bad) like the plague. This film is quietly life affirming. It's well made and intelligent. But it may not make a very deep impression on those used to stronger stuff.

Indeed, it's better not to talk too much about what happens in Family Law, because its little surprises are all it has. It'll lower your blood pressure, in a good way. Those who prefer to be hit over the head with blunt messages will prefer Borat and declare this a namby-pamby flop.

Family Law is Argentina's Best Foreign contender in this year's Oscar competition. (Kazakhstan doesn't have an entry.)

This is an amazing movie. It describes the perfect lifestyle of an Argentinian man/family/relationships. It may sound weird that my comment is so different from the previous one, but if you want to know how a middle-class family is, this is an incredible portrait from it. Daniel Hendler and Julieta Diaz are two of the best young actors we have and they mix up with well-known actors as Adriana Aizemberg. It it a must see; it's funny, sad and moving. If you're not Argentinian you may not get all of it OR you may appreciate our ways in different aspects of life. If you go deeper and you want to know something more that your own country, don't miss the chance and see it.

Even the great cinema masters, including Bergman, Kurosawa and Fellini, reached a point where rehashing the same old stories in new containers became old and boring... Too bad that a promising young Argentine director has reached such a place in so few years. What a boring, mindless movie... What a lack of story, what a lack of feelings(and the lack of feelings was no purposefully described).. how little to say None of the characters has been developed; we can't and don't care much for anybody... maybe the best actor, or at least the one with whom we can connect is the 2 or 3 yrs old child... otherwise, the movie is fairly boring... cute in a vacuous sense. I hate to do this: not worthwhile to go to the movies... nor rent.

Daniel Hendler is a splendid actor. Subtle, without any mannerism, he construct his personages with truth. Daniel Burman make movies about subjects he deeply know. More truth. Real life in movies works a lot (that's my opinion...). Argentinian cinema pay attention to his adult public, producing films with a deep perception of actual problems of relationship in family, work, school etc. Every social class is represented in his movies, and all kinds of problems too. Some authors (like Burman, Campanella, Subiela and others) have his trademarks not only on subjects, but in style and approach. Is a great moment for the Argentinean cinema. Family Law is a simple and direct film, but involves the audience as only great movies do. A little masterpiece.

I found the film quite disappointing. I felt the film lacks focus and intensity and the script is quite flat, almost a soap opera. The film is described (and accordingly so named) as the struggle of Ariel Perlman (Daniel Hendler) a Law professor addressed as 'Doctor Perlman', to realize his own identity from his father, 'Doctor Perlman', an established, sharp Buenos Aires lawyer. Unfortunately the movie has no real focus on this, nor on other aspects of Ariel's life (we see a bit about his role as a teacher, a bit about his family life as husband and father, a bit about his social life, and a bit about his relationship to his father, but no strong story or drama links all this together).

In particular I am not too excited to see this movie as the Argentinean candidate for the Foreign Language Oscar nominations for 2006, as I think it will not compete well with high quality submissions such as 'Water'.