After going through the Argentine cinemas, alternatethe excellent national film, was streamed on Netflix, and quickly rose to be the most watched film in the Top ten of the platform.
pike (Juan Minujinof those actors who give him the role they give him, he always gets it right, he usually convinces us that he’s believable) he’s the central character, the understudy for the title, but he makes his money by being the titular and being in the title in the new film by Diego Lemann.
He is an intellectual who, after a setback in the academic environment in which he moves, accepts the offer to be a substitute teacher of literature in a high school in an area that is not exactly rich or wealthy. If the pupils of state elementary schools need both the education and the food they are given there, the pupils of the school where Lucio falls are at the center of a drug fight.
There is drugs in the school, it is not known who brought it in, whether the drug trafficker that everyone looks at and fears, or the mayors themselves who are undermining the drug trafficker. In any case, Lucio, who is a progressive, but above all a good person, will put the matter on his shoulders.
Not at his best
It is no coincidence that it is his father, El Chileno (Alfredo Castro) who has been fighting for some time to open a diner serving those who have less. Nor that Lucio’s personal life isn’t going through the best moment of him.
Separated, clashes with the daughter (Renata Lerman, daughter of the director, who was awarded at the San Sebastian Film Festival for this his first film role) so much so that he enters the school he wants him to attend, on the one hand, and the eyes with which he still sees his ex (Bárbara Lennie, in a somewhat wasted role), his health father, in short: in the pressure cooker that is alternatesomething can explode.
The co-protagonist, but to whom the plot has not given more text, or presence, is Dilan (Lucas Arrua), Lucio’s favorite student, but who is stuck in the middle of drug disputes and would not have enough time to re-read a poem by Juan Gelmann.
Lerman, along with his co-writers María Meira and Luciana De Mello, fear that tensions are constant. And you arrive at the end, from the audience, with your hands almost, almost sweaty.
Naturally, the environment in which the actions take place has a certain correlation with the invisible gazeby Lerman himself, or between the walls, by Laurent Cantet, but unlike the film that won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, Lucio, as a teacher, will gradually change and open up to what he finds. And you understand that it is better to understand than to indoctrinate.
Minujín is surrounded by a cast of notables, and to those already mentioned we must add María Merlino and Rita Cortese, as teacher and rector of the school. Nothing is simple for anyone who crosses the screen of alternatewhich has a storyline to which the director of So suddenly puts the body and does not dodge the questions.
“alternating”
Very good
Drama. Argentina, 2022. 111′, SAM 13 R. Of: Diego Lermann. With: Juan Minujín, Alfredo Castro, Barbara Lennie, María Merlino, Lucas Arrua, Renata Lerman. Available in: Netflix.
Source: Clarin
