A rigorous character study shot from the p.o.v. of a minister's trusted bodyguard, "El Custodio" takes the high road of Argentine minimalism, which has won hardcore fans around the world but which shuts out larger auds with its rigid rules. Stunted by an exasperatingly slow pace, Rodrigo Moreno's technically impeccable feature film bow has the single-minded quality that wins festival prizes, but its cold protag and uninvolving approach will make it a very tough sell in the real world.It's hard to get inside the middle-aged and serious-minded Ruben (Julio Chavez), who escorts the minister of National Planning (Osmar Nunez) wherever he goes like a highly trained watchdog. A silent fellow who keeps to himself, when he's on the job he's a soldierly automaton.
A man trapped for hours on end as he waits in long, narrow corridors and the tight confines of his limo, or alternately in the emptiness of huge public buildings, Ruben is totally alienated from himself and the world. His private life revolves around his mentally unhinged sister (Cristina Villamor), who creates chaos in film's liveliest scene in a Chinese restaurant. His only idiosyncracy is a hidden talent for sketching but it isn't much of an outlet for a lifetime of repressed instincts. In the pic's last 10 minutes, something snaps but this twist is too coldly calculated to be very satisfying.
As a director, Moreno -- his original screenplay won the 2005 Sundance/NHK Award for Latin America -- is as unbending as his hero, never deviating from Ruben's p.o.v.
This creates an interesting upstairs-downstairs divide, as he silently observes everything the minister and his family does, and submits to a range of their off-handed humiliations. The upper class world he protects offers a sharp contrast to the sordid surroundings of his own life, glimpsed as he straps on his bullet-proof vest in a modest apartment and visits a prostitute on the cheap.
Well-known thesp Chavez uses the subtlest facial movements to suggest the tension building up inside the bodyguard, even as his icy perf keeps the viewer at a safe distance. As the minister, Nunez is extremely neutral as the over-worked politico.
One of the more admirable aspects of the film is Moreno's tight control over the camerawork and editing. Cinematographer Barbara Alvarez uses the sterility of fixed frame shots and desaturated colors as correlates to the protag's compulsively rule-driven life. Nicolas Goldbart's editing gives the story a steady, somewhat numbing rhythm.
Camera (color), Barbara Alvarez; editor, Nicolas Goldbart; music, Juan Federico Jusid; production designer, Gonzalo Belgado Galiana; costume designer, Adelaida Rodriguez Puig; sound (Dolby digital), Catriel Vildosola. Reviewed at Berlin Film Festival (competing), Feb. 13, 2006. Running time: 93 MIN.
With: Cristina Villamor, Luciana Lifschitz, Osvaldo Djeredijian, Julieta Vallina, Guadalupe Docampo, Vanesa Weinberg, Marcelo Xicarts, Francisco Fernandez De Rosa, Michel Azogue, Sophie Keisser.
