So, with an evening unexpectedly to myself, I loaded up Hulu’s Criterion Collection selection, and under “Criterion Picks: Directors You Should Know”, this was the first one, so I watched it.

Wikipedia Pete’s brief summary is: “The picture is set in the high plains of northwestern Argentina and portrays the life of a self-pitying Argentine bourgeois family.” Which: yep, it sure does! Pete quotes the director as saying “It’s something strange, a little weird. It’s the kind of film where you can’t tell what’s going to happen, and I wanted the audience to be very uncomfortable from the beginning.” Which: yep, I sure was!

So I am obvs not any kind of cineaste, and I have no idea what the context of this is in terms of the cinematic culture of Argentina or anything. So from my perspective, it was kind of a lightly ominous but low-key story about a dissolute family continuing to dissolve in mostly subtle ways.

It’s well directed, it’s atmospheric, it’s well-acted; really, it’s pretty much exactly what you’d think a Criterion Collection movie of this sort would be, which is maybe the knock against it.