March 5 points
Argentina, 2024
Direction and script: Ezequiel Tronconi
Duration: 69 minutes
Performers: Amparo Aznárez, Marlene Azulay, Natalia Conde, Brisa Elías, Bruno Estévez, Sabrina Kranjac, Tati Pechi, Diego Sánchez and Agustina Tambella.
Premiere: Available at Cine Gaumont.
The beach and the sea are territories that lend themselves generously to cinematic action. Not only because of the depth of its landscape or its omnipresent sound cadence, but because it is usually a setting that can be associated with the same power to the extremes of introspection or emotional outburst. That’s where the stories take place. Marchnew film written and directed by Ezequiel Tronconi, whose figure is known above all for his work as an actor. Stories that will intersect in that space during a weekend in the month of the title, when the spa cities begin to show their most melancholic side.
Melancholy is precisely one of the most present emotions within the sentimental arc that the characters of March, a group of young people who interact divided into pairs. Everyone finds themselves in that moment of breakdown in which they begin to be aware that adult life is here to stay and they must face the various crisis situations that this implies. A girl is torn between a recent breakup and the decision to freeze her eggs. There are others who, with different excuses, decide to reunite with ex-partners, surrendered to the difficulties of closing (or not) the relationship. There are those who leave the beach behind to return to the city or those who begin to take the first steps of a new love.
Mounted on a classic choral structure, March The moments in which each couple occupies the screen alternates. At the same time, it records some occasional crossings with other characters, to account for the existence of a larger plot, although the protagonists themselves do not always notice it. Despite being simply shot, the film overall manages to make the most of its limited resources with cinematic ingenuity. Well-put together paintings, camera positions that manage to capture the particularity of the spaces, the choice of a very clear color palette that stands out within an autumn landscape in which grays begin to predominate.
It is on the dramatic level where March shows its ups and downs. Because although some stories manage to generate a tension that is sustained by the twists and turns that the links take, there are others where the excuses that fuel them are more capricious and unravel as the action forces them to advance and transform. In these cases, some of the scenes propose situations and dialogues that contradict the intimate bonds that the characters are supposed to share, making them less natural. In others, however, spontaneity manages to win the fight and that is where the best of the proposal emerges.
