There was a time when varied and abundant Argentine cinema was released in this country. Some of those directors left a lasting mark on me, like Adolfo Aristaráin. His way of seeing the world and expressing it with images and sounds frequently moved me. I remember with admiration and gratitude several films that bear his signature as Last days of the victim, Revenge time, A place in the world y Martin (Hache). I also associate them with an extraordinary actor called Federico Luppi. I was meeting another actor of his stature again when I discovered Ricardo Darín in the seductive and playful Nine Queens. I always keep track of Darín, regardless of the quality of his films. His performances are credible and attractive, he never disappoints me. And there are two directors who work together, Mariano Cohn and Gaston Duprat, in films and in series such as The one in charge y Anythingwhich guarantee that I will smile and laugh, both gifted with as much imagination as a healing bad host.
I did not know María Alché or Benjamin Naishtat, authors of Ma’am. I did not have any reference to his work but it has been a pleasure to meet him in this strange and fun film. It talks about the things that can happen in universities, those supposed temples of wisdom and professional and moral ethics that must function like almost all companies, including those very human things of ambition above all, the craft of climbing. , conspiracies, yours and mine, the accumulation of power. And all this when you can be specialized in philosophers like Spinoza and Rousseau, the things of thought and the spirit, not in the universe of urban construction, the trafficking of million-dollar products, politics, such prosaic and pragmatic activities.
It happens that someone must succeed a man with legendary wisdom and knowledge to the prestigious chair, when he has just suffered a heart attack while playing sports. And it is assumed that due to merit and knowledge, his lifelong assistant must have done it, the person who knew the most about his teachings. But the position is greedy and intrigues, alliances and conspiracies begin, both hidden and transparent, and what seemed legitimate becomes murky and twisted. All of this in the midst of the widespread ruin that surrounds unfortunate Argentina and from which the universities are not spared, including the salaries of those who work in them.
There is power of observation in the complex argument of Ma’am, biting, situations with a surreal aroma, hidden or crystalline tensions, pettiness in a supposedly humanist profession, fear of the present and the future, the feeling of generalized brokenness, a mix of comedy and political analysis about the gloomy state of things. I imagine that it was written and shot before that grotesque and exotic man named Milei took absolute power with infinite votes. Some say that everything was so bad in Argentina that it was impossible for it to get worse. But who knows. In any case, screenwriters and realist writers will not lack dramatic material.
And the performers are very good, in short or long roles. Especially Leonardo Sbaraglia. I don’t tend to sympathize with his characters, sometimes I have a feeling of artifice with his interpretations, my pet peeves. Here he is eminent, making a powerful and subtle portrait of a professional careerist, academic and earthly, flatterer and malingerer, a first-class trickster, as much a storyteller as he is a sibylline.