Is it necessary to practice cunning to survive in Argentina?

With Gentle Rains Will Come, the Argentine filmmaker Iván Fund cultivated a fairly characteristic, calm, and contained independent cinema, which used striking premises without taking the sensationalist paths of genre films. The fantastic coverage of that film lent appeal to a certain portrait and commentary of slightly unusual everyday lives. El mensaje, winner of the jury prize at the prestigious Berlin Film Festival, has something of a slightly radicalized extension of that proposal. It is about a girl who supposedly communicates with animals and who, accompanied by relatives who monetize this ability, travels in a van through rural Argentina, on secondary roads, gas stations, and superstitions. Some sequences temporarily deviate from the narrative function and give off a certain documentary air.The black and white photography of Fund and company recalls the picaresque adventures of another road movie: Peter Bogdanovich's New Hollywood classic Paper Moon, by Peter Bogdanovich. Fund's work, however, does not stage the usual transformation or evolution of travelers. In reality, there is not much evolution in any area, nor many adventures. The result ends up seeming like a slender and aesthetically accurate film of atmospheres, sensations, and observations in which a part of a minimal story unfolds. This can cause some frustration for those who want clearer answers and more obviously climactic moments.