Lost Embrace (2004)

Abrazo Partido (Lost Embrace) is a beautiful portrayal of the inner workings of a community of minorities in Buenos Aires. Each has a specific store in the galería and the audience watches as the story of each person is played out before the eyes of Ariel Makaroff, the protagonist. Ariel is struggling with the absence of his father and is seeking to fill that void with his Polish heritage and hopes of a fortune-filled future in Europe. The filming style is unique; with many scenes being seen over the shoulder of a character but the story is well presented. The director, Daniel Burman, captures the Makaroff family and how their stories intertwine with those of the other people working in the galleria. It is a heart-warming story that is applicable in some way to every audience. The authenticity of the characters and the reality of the situations they each encounter adds to the universality of the plot.

In Buenos Aires, the twenty and something years old Jewish-Argentinean Ariel Makaroff (Daniel Hendler) has quited the architecture university and spends his time wandering through the downtown gallery where his mother has a lingerie shop and his brother runs an importation business; shagging the owner of a little Internet business; and trying to get his Polish passport and move to Europe. Ariel has never understood why his father left him when he was a baby to fight in the Yom Kippur War in 1973. When his father returns to Buenos Aires, Ariel discovers the reason why his father left his family."El Abrazo Partido" is a disappointing little personal drama with uninteresting and dull characters and awful camera work. The lead character Ariel is an alienated shirker and his motivations in the story are never clear, since he does not study and has no work; no religion in spite of being Jewish; no sense of nationalism; no girlfriend (he left Estela without any reason); no respect or feelings for his family; no nothing but intercourse with the next door neighbor in the gallery Rita and an apparently interest in having an European passport. His mother, his grandmother, his brother, his father, the neighbors in the gallery, none of these characters is interesting. The style partially recalls the Danish filmmaker movement Dogma 95, since the movie is done on the location; with ambient sound; use of hand-held camera; colored with no use of filters; very realistic plot; etc. However, the hand-held camera work is awful, recalling "The Blair Witch Project" or "Cloverfield" and the division in parts with subtitles seems to be a pretentious trial of intellectual style. But the acting is great and my vote is six.Title (Brazil): "O Abraço Partido" ("The Broken Hug")

"Abrazo Partido" is one of the better Argentine films that have reached us. Not having a market in the USA, if they are not shown in a film festival, they are not seen at all. The director, Daniel Burman working on the screen play with Marcelo Birmajer, shows he is a talent to be reckoned with.The movie presents us with a small mini mall that one encounters all over Buenos Aires. The story is about all the operators of the tiny shops in the complex, but focuses on the Makaroff family. Elias Creations is operated by Sonia, a woman whose husband has deserted her and the two small sons. Elias, the husband has gone to Israel to fight in one of the wars and never returned. His memory looms large, especially in the case of Ariel, who secretly loves him, but resent the abandonment of the family.The camera work is incredible. The director gives us an excellent idea of the area of the neighborhood that at one time was dominated by the European Jews that emigrated to Argentina. Daniel Hendler, does a wonderful job in portraying Ariel, the young man who wants to do just the opposite of what his family did: return to Poland. The family left the horrors of their country by settling in the friendly atmosphere that Argentina offered at the time. Now, during a difficult time, the grandson of the original family wants nothing of his precarious life. His dream is to try his fortune in Europe, Poland, only being the excuse for getting an European passport that only his grandmother can provide, having been born there.Adriana Aizemberg plays the mother, Sonia. Ms. Aizemberg is wonderful as the mother who is so full of life and suddenly sees the world, as she knew it, coming apart. The grandmother, Rosita Londner, is also appealing.A new talent emerges in Argentina.

This film has been compared in the press to an early Woody Allen feature, and the comparison is a just one, not however for the presence of comic moments (there really aren't many such), but for the incredible self-absorption of the hero, Ariel. Abandoned by his father at an early age and bored with his life as a salesman in his mother's lingerie shop located in a Buenos Aires mall, the moody Ariel longs for what seems like hours of screen time to escape to the necessarily greener fields of Europe. Ariel is played by handsome Daniel Hendler who unfortunately gives a pretty one dimensional and ultimately boring performance, ranging from the gloomy to the sorely beset. To be fair to Hendler, though, his role seems deliberately limited to such a narrow range by the screenplay itself, which finds his inability to smile apparently richly comic. This essentially stale coming of age story is further burdened by an incessantly jerky, headache inducing hand-held camera, and the presence of numerous quirky characters doing cameos in the manner of American sit-coms. A forgettable "art" film.