Saturday (2002)

A different way of telling a story

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

I have just watched this movie on a Latin channel here in Miami. I found it incredibly boring and full of overstretched nonsense dialogues that are as dumb as they can get. Even for an Argentine like me this Argentine movie was pointless so I can assume it is even more boring for non-Argentine viewers.I cannot think of a good reason why this movie was even made. I cannot stress enough how tedious the dialogues are (e.g.: "-It's strange two meet you twice in the same date. -It can happen. -But it's strange. -But it can happen. -But it's strange. -Yeah, but, you know, it can happen"). Enough said.No message, no plot. Invest your 72 minutes in something else.

Juan Villegas, who also wrote the screen play for "Sabado", is a young Argentine talent whose work amazes for the interesting way he presents us six different young people living in that great metropolis. Their Buenos Aires, though, is not the touristy place we have watched in other films. Much of it takes place in the outlying neighborhoods where these aimless souls tend to gravitate.The basic premise of the film is about three different couples in various degrees of straining apart from their relationships as they intermingle with each other in plausible situations. Mr. Villegas' cinema might well be influenced by Eric Rohmer, as he has confessed. We can also equate it to Jim Jarmusch, and Richard Linkletter, and even Martin Reijtman, three other directors that have dealt with aimless youth in their search for a place in the sun.There is Gaston Pauls, a somewhat famous actor, whose name was made when he appeared in "9 Queens". When Gaston's car collides with the one Martin and Natalia are riding, it is the first instance where these lives touch. Gaston, who is seen with Andrea, an wishy-washy woman who doesn't seem to make up her mind. Later on, Andrea will meet Martin. The other couple, Leopoldo and Camila, seem to be having their own problems. Camila, who is about to interview Gaston, is a bit fed up with Leopoldo. On the other hand, Natalia and Leopoldo connect in an unexpected way.Where Juan Villegas succeeded is with the way he wrote the dialog for this film. The length of the picture, at 72 minutes of screen time, is just the perfect amount for what the six characters will go through in the movie. The interaction is sharp and without artifice. The inside joke seems to involve the way people tend to mispronounce Mr. Pauls last name and the corrections, he and the ones that are "in the know" seem to tell the others.The film shows six interesting actors from Argentina. Gaston Pauls is the best known face in the cast, but the excellent Daniel Hendler also makes an appearance as Martin. We enjoyed the terse intelligent responses of Camila Toker, who tells it like she sees it. Mariana Anghileri, Leonardo Murua and Eva Sola do also good work for Mr. Villegas."Sabado" shows a young director who shows great promise and who will go to the top of his profession.

I had the chance to see this movie at the Latin BEAT festival in New York City in 2003. I will not comment on the plot, there is almost no plot, but that it is a really well achieved portrayal of a Generation of young argentinians that wander. They don't have money, Argentina is bankrupted, and they have nothing to do on a Saturday. Indiferent whether the plan is to go out or stay at home, go for a drive or walk, there is nihilism all aver the movie and this can be annoying. It is not if you think that the movie was actually made by kids the generation of those depicted in the movie. If you saw Richard Linklater's "slacker", well, this is the new millennium argie version.

SPOILER"Sábado" is a nice little movie that didn´t had quite the success it deserved at the time of its release here in Argentina. So it´s not really likely that anyone outside Latin America will ever get a chance to see it, which is a shame.The movie depicts the wandering of six characters (three couples) through Buenos Aires one saturday afternoon. They ran into each other practically all the time, sometimes literaly (Daniel Hendler seems to crash his car at least twice in every movie he´s in), to the point that every single one of them has had a chat with any other, and most of the time without being aware of the relation. In the end, they all return to their lives one sunday morning and nothing has changed. The film thus shows the inner boredom of a certain class of young people in Buenos Aires.The juicy part is the dialogue. Every single piece of dialogue here is superb and extremely quotable. Villegas pays a lot of attention to the delivery of the speech and it shows: none of the characters says anything honest about himself but by the end we know them all very well just by the way they speak about stupid things. The camera, on the other hand, is very static and straight-forward (it almost never moves), which in a way fits the mood of the movie but becomes a little tiresome. If we have to summarize I´d say that the only flaw of "Sábado" is that of being a little too long -even with 76 minutes. We don´t need all those scenes to get the point that this is one empty existence. But it never gets downright boring so why even bother to point that out?