• Golden Globe Awards

The Weasel’s Tale (Argentina)

It has been 10 years since The Secret in Her Eyes was released in Argentina, starting an amazing international journey that ended up with the film winning the Best Foreign Film Oscar – just the second time that the South American country took home that award. That victory made Juan José Campanella, its director, a local hero, but instead of following it with another feature he opted for trying his hand at animation, directing Metegol in 2013, and devoted his time to work on television, including episodes of American series such as Colony and Halt and Catch Fire.His decision to return to live-action features a decade after Secret generated a lot of expectations in Argentina, especially since he was remaking a classic of local cinema, Los muchachos de antes no usaban arsénico (Yesterday’s Guys Used No Arsenic), which was directed in 1976 by his mentor José Martinez Suárez. For years Suárez was responsible for the prestigious Mar del Plata Film Festival, and, sadly, he passed away this year at age 93.The Weasel’s Tale, the second highest-grossing Argentinian film in 2019, shows how an old-time star, Mara Ordaz (Graciela Borges, the muse of Leopoldo Torre Nilsson) forms an unusual family in the decadent mansion in the countryside she shares with her disabled husband (Luis Brandoni), the screenwriter of her biggest hits, Norberto Imbert (The Distinguished Citizen‘s Oscar Martínez) and the director who worked with her many times (Marcos Mundstock, in his first big film role at 77). The peace they share changes forever when a young couple shows up unannounced, supposedly lost during a road trip. But that’s not really the case, as they are real estate agents who want to convince Mara to sell the house with hopes of making a big profit. Soon, we realize that the brokers (played by the Spaniard Clara Lago with a perfect Argentine accent and Nicolas Francella, son of Guillermo Francella, who was the good friend in The Secret...) are in danger of becoming just another pair of weasels as the ones Imbert regularly catches with its traps.During an interview with the Golden Globes website, Campanella said: “I’m a big fan of the original film, which is not well known by the general public in Argentina because it was released one week after the military coup. In fact, none of the actors who participated in my film saw it before being hired. But I decided this version should have different twists, another ending, and its own tone”. He also explained to us why it took him so long to make another film: “I don’t film very often. Between The Secret… and Avellaneda’s Moon, my previous film, five years passed. I do TV, theater and film, it’s like a symphony. In fact, I don’t know if I will ever make another film…”