El hijo de la novia6/16/2023 He is obviously on bad terms with his ex-wife (Claudia Fontán) and his charming young daughter, Vicky (Gimena Nóbile), is afraid of him and unwilling to spend the court-mandated time with him that her father expects but does not enjoy. When we meet him 34 years later, his drive for efficiency and his impatience with employees and suppliers as he constantly barks down his cell-phone, calling everyone “moron,” is meant to give us the idea, I think, that he is his mother’s son, though he rarely goes to see her. But that youthful sense of idealism, the desire to right wrongs and do noble deeds, has long since been forgotten. In their play, Rafael is Zorro, his friend the sidekick, Sgt Garcia. In fact, the film begins with the young Rafael and a friend picking a fight with some older boys and his mother - represented only by her midriff - getting them out of it and chasing the boys away. The nonsense phrase she keeps repeating in an ill-natured way, a propos of nothing, is “Look at this mess,” and we can well believe that here is a woman who has spent her life cleaning up messes with terrifying efficiency, though without much sympathy for those who caused them. It does so partly by showing us the devotion to her of her son and husband, in their very different ways, and partly by the remarkable performance of Norma Aleandro as the ruin of something much grander. Perhaps the film’s greatest achievement is the sense it is able to convey to us of what an impressive woman Señora Belvedere once was while showing her only in the ravages of old age. Her disappointment on his dropping out of law-school still rankles, and he is embittered by the fact that, now he has at last achieved some success in life, she is beyond feeling proud of him, as indeed she is beyond everything else. Rafael rarely visits her, but her presence looms large in his life. His father Nino (Héctor Alterio) still drops in on the restaurant from time to time and makes his incomparable tiramasu, but his mother, Norma (Norma Aleandro), is now in a nursing home, suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. Set in present day Buenos Aires, it tells the story of Rafael Belvedere (Ricardo Darín), a divorced, law-school drop-out of 42 who now runs, rather successfully, the up-scale restaurant his mother and father started when he was a child. Son of the Bride, written by Fernando Castets and Juan José Campanella, who also directed, is an utterly captivating little Argentine/Spanish co-production.
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