Finally, after more than twenty years, Argentine Alejandro Agresti’s El acto en cuestión, has had a local commercial release after overcoming never ending distribution problems. It was first presented at Cannes right after it was made, then in Holland, and years later it was screened in a retrospective at the Sala Lugones, last year at the Mar del Plata film fest and this year at the BAFICI.
Funded by the Dutch TV network VPRO, El acto en cuestión is regarded as Agresti’s best film to date. It wasn’t shot in Argentina but in Rotterdam, Munich, Ghent, Karlovy Vary, Paris, Budapest, Sofia, Romania, Bologna and Prague. And while many scenes take place on location, much of the film transpires in especially made soundstages and settings. In this unusual feature, Agresti has truly created a world that resembles nothing you’ve probably seen before.
The lead character, Miguel Quiroga (deftly played by the late Carlos Roffé) is a two-bit go-getter who has specialized in stealing books from libraries and bookstores he visits regularly. One of such books is devoted to occultism and provides him with a magic trick to make things and people disappear. Sooner than later, he sets up a disappearing act he performs at circuses and fairs. In no time, he becomes famous and admired. But what would happen if someone found another copy of the same book and learned how to perform the same trick? How would people at large react if they knew his act is not his own creation?
Filmed in lustrous black and white, with an imaginative mise en scene where more is more, tilted camera angles, distorted spatial proportions, a highly inspired cinematography, and a dramatic musical score, Agresti’s finest film is shaped as a fable, but also has a strong allegorical edge as it hints at the disappearance of people during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship in Argentina. But unlike many films from that period, which relied too much on allegories and failed to properly develop the literal story, El acto en cuestión offers a set of aesthetics that is as cinematically innovative and ideologically insightful. Like in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, books are burned here too.
Also, there are other and more visible literary references to the likes of Roberto Arlt, Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares, as well as an assessment of the traits that make up the idiosyncrasy of Porteños. The rest of the cast, that is to say, Mirta Busnelli, Lorenzo Quinteros, and Sergio Poves Campos in the leading roles, delivers colourful and more than adequate performances.
From a distance, El acto en cuestión may come across as too exuberant and perhaps too heavy on formalism and symbolism, but in the context of time it becomes even more valuable.
Production notes
El acto en cuestión (Argentina, Netherlands,1993) Written and directed by Alejandro Agresti. With: Carlos Roffé, Sergio Poves Campos, Mirta Busnelli, Lorenzo Quinteros. Cinematography: Néstor Sanz. Editing: Stefan Kamp. Music: Toshio Nakagawa. Distributed by: Zeta Films. NC13. Runtime: 110 minutes.
