Embrace life, dont let it pass you by! (Lost Embrace (El Abrazo Partido) (DVD))

Name: Ailran

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Product:	Lost Embrace (El Abrazo Partido) (DVD)
Date:	20/06/06 (115 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Beautiful, slow paced look at life

Disadvantages: a bit to fragmented in places with too many stories to tell

The Lost Embrace is what Ariel, a mid to late twenties Argentinean Jew of Polish extraction, feels he missed in his childhood, his father having run off to fight in Israel not long after he was born. What he has instead of a father though is what amounts to an extended family, the shop owners of a small mall in Buenos Aires where his mother runs a little lingerie shop. A diverse group of many ages and many nationalities run the shops, the Italian family who run the electrics shop and the beauty saloon, the Koreans who cannot get into the ‘Korean’ Mall and run a Feng Shui shop, the two old Jewish tailors and, of course, other Argentineans. They are all friends and help each other out whenever they can.

While Lost Embrace focuses on Ariel and his aimless life, forever complaining about his father and trying to get a Polish passport so he can go to Europe, it is the secondary characters that bring Lost Embrace to life.

As Ariel narrates at the beginning, as he introduces the audience to all the shop owners, they all have a story to tell, they may not extraordinary but they all have one and this just about sums up Lost Embrace perfectly. It is not an extraordinary story, or even a particularly interesting one but somehow it has just about enough to keep your attention and for the characters to grow on you. It is like watching continued episodes of a documentary, especially with the use of intertitles to split sections of the film.

Lost Embrace is very much a character-based film and the script gives these characters some sparkling lines. Because they come from the characters they add to the realistic look and feel of the film and come across all the funnier.

When Ariel is in the Polish embassy being interviewed about getting a passport he answers a question about Poland and its people with:- “I like Roman Polanski – The one who had problems with a girl”. That is not the greatest way to try and get yourself a Polish passport and this sort of line would often feel out of place, but for Ariel it is just the sort of thing you can imagine him saying, he is so desperate to please he speaks before thinking.

The more you get to know the characters the more you come to realise how well Lost Embrace is written. The set up for the race between Ramon and ‘The Peruvian’ and the reason behind it is almost pure farce while the way the sound cuts, leaving only her footsteps, heels clicking on the floor as Rita (the sex symbol of the film) sashays her way down the mall to her shop is beautifully shot and could come from any classic sexy, romance film.
Lost Embrace is a film you experience rather than enjoy; a slice of life that while different from our own is still recognisable enough for us to relate to.

If you can find this film anywhere and like foreign films then this is one that is well worth a watch. Though it will certainly never make it into any list of top films I’ve seen it is, even now almost a year since I saw it, bringing back fond memories and a smile to my face.

This was Argentina’s entry for best foreign Oscar in the 2004 awards.

It runs for 100 minutes and doesn’t even seem to have a BBFC rating in the UK which seems to suggest to me it has only ever had a Film festival release over here which is a shame.

Summary: A Beautifully shot film about life in an Argentinian 'mall'