The Other) (2007) is an Argentine, French, and German drama film, written and directed by Ariel Rotter, his second feature.
The film was executive produced by Aqua Films' Verónica Cura, and produced by Enrique Piñeyro and Christian Baute.
El otro was funded by the Instituto Nacional de Cine y Artes Audiovisuales (Argentina), the Vision Sudest Fund (Switzerland), the World Cinema Fund (Berlin International Film Festival), and the Hubert Bals Fund (Netherlands).
The picture features Julio Chávez as Juan Desouza, who was awarded the Silver Bear as Best Actor at the 2007 Berlin International Film Festival.
The film tells of Juan Desouza (Julio Chávez), a lawyer in his late 40s, who's happily married and his wife is expecting a child.
Casi dos años después de recibir dos premios en Berlín, el del Jurado y el de interpretación masculina para Julio Chávez, llega a las salas españolas la cinta argentino-alemana "El otro", segundo largometraje de Ariel Rotter ("Sólo por hoy"), que desde entonces ha ido acumulando reconocimientos en diversos otros certámenes y en los Cóndor. "Mi película es simple y oscura, pero tengo muchas expectativas de que el público la disfrute", ha dicho el cineasta argentino.
En "El otro", el prestigioso actor argentino Julio Chávez ("El custodio") es Juan Desouza, un abogado de mediana edad que está a punto de tener un hijo y paralelamente asiste a la decadencia física de su padre. En clara crisis vital, durante un viaje de trabajo, la muerte súbita de su compañero de asiento en el autobús agudiza su angustia frente al final de la vida. Por ello, decide adoptar la personalidad del fallecido. "El personaje busca entender el ciclo de la vida", ha explicado Rotter. El realizador de "Sólo por hoy" ha reconocido que siempre pensó en Chávez como protagonista, y que sin su concurso la película hubiera sido casi imposible.
Por su parte, Chávez considera que la actitud de su personaje de adoptar otras personalidades "es sin ningún tipo de maldad, es un juego ingenuo, como una travesura infantil que surge después de que Juan descubra que, inevitablemente, tiene que morir". En su opinión, este film -que se estrena este viernes por fín en España- tiene mucho que ver con sus previas cintas "Extraño" y "El custodio", y considera el todo una "trilogía del silencio", en la que sus personajes respectivos apenan usan la palabra.
Rotter, quien empleó cuatro años desde que empezó a escribir "El otro" hasta su finalización, dijo a DW que "las expectativas en el plano íntimo de la película van más allá del juicio del público. En el plano privado tienen que ver con cuánto de uno está representado en la película. En el plano social de la película, uno tiene la expectativa de saber qué le sucede al otro al verla, cuánto puede resonar adentro de cada espectador lo que uno tenía para decir. Me estimulan las sensaciones que recorren al espectador y ver si esas sensaciones de algún modo tienen que ver con las que tuve yo al hacerla".
"No es -añadía- necesariamente autobiográfica. Es cine que trata sobre algo que crees conocer. En lo que yo hago, me interesa filmar o escribir cosas que conozco o creo conocer y no sobre cualquier cosa. El cine argentino tiene mucha diversidad. Se hacen 50 películas por año. Lo que existe es una tendencia al cine de autor, también cine documental y de alto contenido político. Se conciben las escenas de las películas de un modo valiente y fuertemente ligado con la tradición europea. Argentina como sabes, está construido, por inmigrantes europeos, de ahí viene el lazo y el gusto por lo europeo. Hay una cultura cinematográfica más poderosa si se compara con otros países de Sudamérica".
On a one-day business trip to the country-side, Desouza embarks on an unintended journey. When he reaches his destination Desouza discovers that the man traveling next to him is not sleeping but dead.
Secretly, he assumes the dead man's identity and invents a profession for himself. He finds a place to stay in the village where the man used to live and contemplates not returning.
Juan Desouza undertakes an adventure into nature, into the rediscovery of his tastes and his basic instincts. He tries to grasp the idea that the life dealt out for him, and which he chose to live, is not the only one possible.
He eventually goes back home, stronger from the spiritual experience.
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What is The Art of Film Memory
The Art of Film Memory is my personal film blog. Call it "live notes" or an act of montage if you will. Basically it is a work of memory. Someone once said that to exist, to truly exist, was to exist in celluloid. In many ways I agree, since our flesh and blood bodies deteriorate and degenerate far too rapidly to for us to really say that they endure. But perhaps today to exist has come to mean something else, since it also means to exist and last in that universal "ethosphere" we now call the internet.
Memory, it should be understood, is also about forgetting, and at my present age I freely admit I now forget more than I seem to be able to remember. So to help me conserve myself, and in particular that part of my life which has been given over to the unashamed enjoyment of that seventh art, or simply to help me remember which films I have actually seen, I have set up this blog, or scrap book for my life.
Since I currently already find myself writing far, far too much, in these times of wanton economic crisis, even if I did have anything useful to say about cinema, I have not the energy left to say it with. So little of what you will find here actually comes from me - perhaps the odd comment here and there. What does come from me is the structure, the organisation and selection of the content, which is, at the end of the day, governed by that initial - or primordial - choice, of which films to see, and which to miss.
So in a sense, even if the words and images are not mine, this blog is a work of autobiography, in the most literal and mundane sense of the term.
So welcome visitor, to one of my more private and intimate areas of personal space. I hope that those of you who from time to time pass through this blog will find the act of reading/watching/gazing at the contents every bit as enjoyable as I, the machinest, found the task of assembling it.
Memory, it should be understood, is also about forgetting, and at my present age I freely admit I now forget more than I seem to be able to remember. So to help me conserve myself, and in particular that part of my life which has been given over to the unashamed enjoyment of that seventh art, or simply to help me remember which films I have actually seen, I have set up this blog, or scrap book for my life.
Since I currently already find myself writing far, far too much, in these times of wanton economic crisis, even if I did have anything useful to say about cinema, I have not the energy left to say it with. So little of what you will find here actually comes from me - perhaps the odd comment here and there. What does come from me is the structure, the organisation and selection of the content, which is, at the end of the day, governed by that initial - or primordial - choice, of which films to see, and which to miss.
So in a sense, even if the words and images are not mine, this blog is a work of autobiography, in the most literal and mundane sense of the term.
So welcome visitor, to one of my more private and intimate areas of personal space. I hope that those of you who from time to time pass through this blog will find the act of reading/watching/gazing at the contents every bit as enjoyable as I, the machinest, found the task of assembling it.
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