From the sexual ghosts of Mariana Enríquez to the exuberant charisma of Lali Espósito

Special envoy to San SebastianCinema begins to sink its fangs into the fascinating universe of gothic horror of Mariana Enríquez, who is the great current reference of Latin American fantastic literature, with an extraordinary universe of gothic horror deeply rooted in the Argentine reality that has not gone unnoticed by cinema. While the adaptation that the Barcelona-born Marçal Forés is preparing of the short story was being finalized Where are you, my heart?, last year it premiered at the Sitges Festival the remarkable La virgen de la tosquera, which started from two of the author's short stories, and this Sunday it has arrived at the San Sebastian Festival My sad dead, in which the Chilean Pablo Larraín adapts four of Enríquez's short stories: A sunny place for shady people, My sad dead, When we spoke to the dead and Julie.

As a The queen of the clay pit, My sad dead weaves the different short stories into a single narrative, which is presented in San Sebastian as a film and which, starting this Friday, can be seen on Netflix in a four-episode miniseries format. According to the platform, there is almost no difference between the material of one version and the other. In a context where traditional categories have less and less weight, why not program it at the festival as a series? Or on Netflix as a film? Be that as it may, My sad dead is one of the most stimulating works in the official competition: a supernatural drama that chews on the murky atmosphere, fatalism, and slow-burn horror of Enríquez's literature.

The always excellent Mercedes Morán occupies the narrative center of gravity of My sad dead with a magnetic character, Ema, a retired and grumpy surgeon who since she was a child has seen and heard the spirits of the dead, a gift that is more of a curse with which she has had to learn to live. Her niece is also a medium, an obese teenager and victim of bullying who at night has intense ectoplasmic orgies with a small group of ghosts. Around her, Larraín and the other two screenwriters orchestrate a story about the weight of the past and its tendency to resurface, a theme always pertinent in a country with as many skeletons in the closet as Argentina.

It is a pity that My sad dead does not make better use of the character of the daughter played by Dolores Fonzi, quite wasted for a good part of a footage that is bloated in its final stretch, surely to adjust to episodic conventions and finish padding the final chapter. In any case, the main criticism that must be made of the series (or film) is aesthetic: a dull and grey photography, as dead as the ghosts that inhabit the story, and that goes against such powerful images as that of the corpse floating in a water tank.

Once upon a time in Argentina

Argentine cinema has been the great protagonist of the day in the official competition, where the new film by Benjamín Naishtat has also premiered, a festival regular who two years ago presented the brilliant university comedy Puan, co-directed with María Alché. In Glaxo, Naishtat brings back the lead actor from that film, an always magnificent Marcelo Subiotto, but his new work has much more to do with Rojo, the political drama set in the months leading up to the 1976 coup d'état, which took home three awards from the official selection at the 2018 San Sebastián Festival.

In Glaxo, which adapts the eponymous novel by Hernán Ronsino, Naishtat borrows the multi-temporal structure of epic dramas in the tradition of Once Upon a Time in America to tell the story of a group of young people in a provincial town fascinated by the young and exuberant wife of a retired policeman and the unforgivable betrayal committed by one of the boys. The film gains interest when it explores the policeman's repressive past –and, therefore, the impunity of state crimes in Argentina– and when Naishtat lingers on the charisma of Lali Espósito –a very popular actress and singer in Argentina and one of the most critical voices against Milei–, very convincing as an involuntary femme fatale. But all in all, it is not enough to redeem a correct film that travels paths that are too familiar and promises a catharsis that never arrives.