I think we're going to have to keep this guy around ... checking in again from AFI, here's Peter Martin ...
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Pity the serious Spanish-language drama. Without blood, guts, sex, marquee names, or oodles of style, intimate fare like Eduardo Raspo's TATTOOED must fight for attention.
TATTOOED is an extremely modest affair. Paco (Nahuel Perez Biscayart) has a small tattoo, a token of love from his mother before she abandoned the family during his infancy. (She subsequently died from an illness.) Now in his late teens, Paco finally decides that he must discover why she left. He tries to run off with his girlfriend Tero (Jimena Anganuzzi) before his father (Luis Ziembrowsky) catches up to them. They reluctantly join forces and travel to the hometown of Paco's mother in the countryside of Argentina, where they talk to Paco's grandparents and hear about a man called "Gaucho."
The chief pleasure is the script. Paco is fairly well established in the opening scenes as a typical unhappy youth, but his father demonstrates a surprising amount of tolerance and support for his son. Tero also has a couple of surprises up her sleeve, and Raspo, who wrote the script with Enrique Cortes, wraps things up with a couple of twists of his own.
TATTOOED is a gentle, low-key, muddy-looking, slowly-paced drama with several good insights about family dynamics and the long-term effects of romantic pain and regret. If that's your cup of tea, drink it up.
The film opened in its native Argentina on November 3.
Review by Peter Martin.