25 Watts

I am not an "art" movie buff, but this one is a gem. Excellent, almost documentary portrait of urban life for three young boys in ¿modern? Montevideo. The story is simple, the atmosphere is everything. This is sort of a 25 watt version of "Trainspotting", which is *exactly* the intention, if you know what I mean.

This very low budget Uruguayan movie, shot in black and white, and somewhat reminiscent of the films of Jim Jarmusch, tells the story of the aimless adventures of a group of men in their early twenties in Montevideo. None of them studies, a few of them held to crappy jobs, and their success with women is, much to their chagrin, virtually nil. There is not much to do for them but to kill time around the city with various antics. This is shot not as a drama, but as a comedy, which seems to me to be the right decision. If there is a theme to this movie (and this is clearly not a "message" movie) is the lack of meaningful projects for the youth of Uruguay (particularly its males). A useful comparison is with an Argentine movie called 76-89-03, but that film was more corrosive and politically incorrect, and therefore was far more controversial. The directors, Rebella and Stoll, made another film a few years later, Whisky, that it was more polished and mature, and dealt with the hopelessness not of the youth of Uruguay but of its middle aged people. Soon after Whisky, Rebella killed himself with a shotgun, so we don't know whether he would have graduated to a major or important director. A good film, overall.

I hope this film will be the first of a large number of pictures. Making pictures is not common in Uruguay, and filming it in black and white is less common. This film show you how our country is, but without showing you the typical things, the touristic part (beaches, squares and so on), something that appears in almost all the uruguayan films. I recommend it, it´s one of the best films I have ever seen.

This film depicts an average day in the life of three young men in Montevideo (Uruguay) in a very funny way.

The adventures of these guys are bound to entertain you even though, or more likely because they are adventures on a tragically small scale. Even when our heroes are bored a few laughs are just around the corner. The array of sympathetic, hilarious and strange characters that crosses the screen is so colorful I almost forgot that I was watching a film in black and white.

And besides that, the realism that comes to your screen is a refreshment in the Hollywood-dominated world of film.

The DVD case likens this to "a Spanish language SLACKER" which isn't entirely off, but it reminded me more of CLERKS or STRANGER THAN PARADISE. The thing is, I don't like any of the films I just mentioned. Rudderless youths hanging around, whoop-de-friggin-do. Watching TV, being bored, meeting mildly oddball characters, smoking pot, talking about their girl troubles, blah blah blah. Fortunately, I did kind of like these three guys. They have a fun rapport, busting each other's balls and so forth. Some of the situations and conversations are fairly amusing... but others aren't. The raw black & white cinematography is a familiar route for this milieu, and it services the film well enough. But Rebello and Stoll indulge in a number of stylistic choices that I found more annoying than clever: 360-degree camera spins, quick cutaways, interior monologues. It's the sort of thing that screams "directorial debut". There were parts of the film I enjoyed, but not enough to give it a very strong recommendation.