[OP 10/12/06 - Arg Journal]

PIZZA, BEER & SMOKES (Argentina / 1997)



In early to mid 90s, such acclaimed films as Rapado (1992) and Historias Breves (1995) paved the way -- both commercially and aesthetically -- for the new generation of Argentinian filmmakers now considered the "New Wave." Historias Breves, a much heralded effort which comprised of 10 shorts, brought the likes of Adrin Caetano, Daniel Burman (Un Crisantemo Estalla en Cinco Esquinas [1998]), and Lucrecia Martel (La Cinaga [2001]) into the publics eye for the first time. For his remarkably assured debut feature, Pizza, Beer & Smokes (Pizza, Birra, Faso), the Montevideo-born Caetano decided to team up with filmmaker Bruno Stagnaro, whose short was also featured in the aforementioned film. Their joint effort ended up being one of the major early successes of the New Argentinian Cinema, and established a cult-like status among the youth, perhaps just as much for its colorful language (even the latter two words in the Spanish title of the film are local slangs) as for the pertinent socio-economic issues it conjured up. Shot via a documentary-style aesthetic and with a mostly non-professional cast, Pizza, Beer & Smokes features a gang of disaffected, unemployed street-youth who commit petty crimes in order to get by. Each endeavor introduces a new set of challenges for them which theyre barely able to meet. And this eventually ends up alienating the pregnant girlfriend (Pamela Jordn) of their leader, El Cordobs (Hctor Anglada), who is now forced to make a decision regarding the path he wants to traverse as the authorities close in. Certainly a premise ripe enough to be engaged in melodrama or didacticism, but Caetano and Stagnaro do away with both; instead, they channel their energies in implementing a gritty, low-key realism that the Dardennes' films are regarded for. And speaking of great films, Buuel's Mexican masterpiece, Los Olvidados (1950), is paid an homage by the filmmakers in a sequence involving an attack on a paraplegic.

_______________________

*Available on DVD in the U.S. (Cinematica).