Kept and Dreamless (2005) User Reviews

Strong women, strong film

[tjackson · 1 January 2010]

If you get chance - see this movie - It'll be hard to find in the States, but you'll be amazed. A coked out mother, brilliant but way on the skids , is being buoyed by her 10 year old, and the support of some friends and neighbors, who all have their own problems. The men in the film are hopeless and ridiculous. The women are , well, "kept and dreamless", but not beyond hope. It really is a Marxist/Feminist film where class and history inform the situations. And most incredibly , it really is a comedy of a dark sort. Even in the most desperate situations, the director finds an absurd angle, which gives rise to the hope and sustenance of the film. It is also shot in great pop colors, particularly shades of green and pink (reflecting earth and women?) The performances are terrific. The little girl, Lucia Snieg, is really, really unbelievable. Where do these little actresses come from?! She's not even in the credits listed here, and she ought to be rich and world famous!! Vera Fogwill as the mother is so real, so touching with the little girl, and their scenes together are utterly grounded. The bonding between all the women is heartening. The movie gives no easy answers, but in it's critique of gender, class, and Argentinian society, it manages to balance hope, laughs, and inspiration. A rare treat.

That's not sugar

[fablesofthereconstru-1 · 4/10 · 10 June 2008]

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.