QUICK’N DIRTY: LIVE FROM SAN SEBASTIAN

Eighty-three-year-old Martha Hoffman (Marilú Marini) enjoys life to the full. Always dressed to the nines, she is a wealthy art collector with abundant friends and lovers a third of her age. Her spacious Buenos Aires apartment is dotted with expensive furniture, paintings and sculptures (including a Dali). A little bell is always to hand in case she needs one of her maids to perform a little hand. And a glass of whisky is never too far from her gri[

Her two daughters Miriam and Olga are very concerned that Martha may pour a large amount of money into an art institution, basically a large warehouse with audiovisual installations, music and drugs. Or even worse: that her mother may get married, thus compromising their sizeable inheritance. So they admit her into a psychiatric institution against her will. For 27 nights, the old and strong woman battles for her freedom. She is finally allowed back into her apartment, under the condition that she may not see her friends. Court expert Leandro Casares (played by the director Daniel Hendler) is the only person allowed to spend time with her. She suspects that the entire house is fitted with microphones and that her every step is being monitored.

Martha boasts that she was friends with Pina Bausch during the 1950s in Paris. Her extravagant friends and lifestyle seem to support this. The woman is no commoner, and she has no desire to mingle with them. We wishes to continue to live her life with all the excesses that she always enjoyed. Martha is unabashed about her sexuality. She flirts with Leandro and mocks him because she probably has more sex than he does (an assumption. he confirms to be true). Her life is a “sea full of dicks”. She has a colourful penis sculpture on her shelves, and loves music and poetry embellished with a plethora of phalluses – of various colours, shapes and sizes. Martha’s confident personality and allure is such that Leandro feels intimidated. She demands that they both get naked, to the despair of the hapless investigator. She then clarifies: “I meant we should get rid of our masks”. Metaphorical masks or clothes, the prospect of disrobing himself is a terrifying one to one well-meaning however unassertive male protagonist.

Leandro attempts to remain neutral. His works for the legal system mandates that he remains impartial. Martha soon finds out that he’s asexual and apolitical, too. She is determined to instil some sense of excitement into his life, thereby evoking empathy, and allowing him to realise that she is a person in control of her faculties, and that she is being exploited by those who should care about her the most: her two daughters. Miriam is far more determined in her quest to keep her mother locked up, while Olga is a little more hesitant (however manipulable). Martha understands that she can trust neither, and she looks rather indifferent to their selfish behaviour. She is a staunch bonne vivante.

This is a story populated with unidimensional characters: the irresistible crazy old lazy, the unscrupulous daughters, the inept expert and the corrupt justice system (embodied by various lawyers and prosecutors). There is little room for subtlety, with some of the personages bordering on the caricatural. This allows for the occasional laughter, however it prevents a more in-depth examination of each individual in their complexity.

27 Nights starts out as a comedy, with the two daughters scrambling to find a keyword that would trigger the medics to sedate their mother. The jaunty piano notes emphasise the humorous. Then the story treads on the more serious and complex drama territory, as it seeks to investigate the relationship between sanity, physical and moral restrain. It asks whether enjoying life to the full, being promiscuous, inconsequent and profligate are symptoms of “frontotemporal dementia”, or just a character trait (reprehensible for some, and laudable for others). The answer is contingent on the amount of money that the patient has. “Mental health” and “self-sufficiency” is only a concern for those with abundant money.

The film attempts to return to the funny and lighthearted moments of the beginning without success. It also seeks to comment on the meaning of art as a tool for personal liberation, but the representation of the artistic milieu is just so cliched and superficial, that instead it becomes a mere device in Martha’s search for freedom.

Title cards about the fate of the real Martha Hoffman help to elucidate the outcome, as a clumsy ending does little in order to shed light into the role of Leandro in Martha’s path to freedom, and the cumbersome reconciliation/ agreement with the daughters. The lack of court scenes is a little strange, to0, particularly for a film about a real-life story that helped to reshape Argentina’s judiciary (at least that’s what the closing text informs us).

27 Nights just opened the 73rd edition of the San Sebastian International Film Festival. It shows in the event’s Official Competition.

For yet Spanish-language film about an old woman evading the psychiatric “care” imposed by her daughter, in Miriam Touzani’s far more profound, relatable and funny Calle Malaga (also from this year).