LOS LABIOS (THE LIPS)
Argentina, 2010, 104 minutes, Colour.
Eva Bianco, Victoria Raposo, Adela Sanchez, Raul Lagge.
Directed by Ivan Fund and Santiago Loza.
More of a worthy film with semi-documentary overtones than a fiction feature.
Three women leave Buenos Aires to go to the countryside to meet with people, question them about their conditions and then make reports for planning and for statistics. They do this, with the audience going about with them, listening to the interviews, responding emotionally to problems and needs, while getting to know the three woman and the man who has responsibility for them in their work, in their accommodation in an abandoned hospital and in their personal lives in the town.
1. A worthy film? Social concern? Personalising social problems and social work?
2. The Argentinian locations, the countryside, the town, the outskirts, people living in the countryside? The musical score, the songs?
3. The focus on the three women, the introduction to each of them, going to the bus station, travelling together? No-one to meet them? Raul finding them and taking them to the abandoned hospital?
4. The hospital, squalor, the accommodation, rooms made ready for the women? Their settling in?
5. The personalities of the three women, their backgrounds, their interactions with each other? Going to the restaurant after doing themselves up? Getting a feel of the town?
6. The film detailing their work, their going to meet people, the parents, the children, the families? The long interview with the unemployed man and the story of his children? The mother and her stories?
7. The screenplay and its using the reports of the women to gather information, details of the problems, statistics? The background for government investigations?
8. The effect on the women, their lives in the town, their interactions with each other, the tensions? The tensions with the people? Raul as a back-up and his concern for them?
9. The final night, in the town, the meal? Raul? The sense of achievement?
10. The playfulness and questions behind the final credits? The children in the mud, with women joining them?
11. A film to raise consciousness about poverty, illness, families and children? For Argentina? For the world?
