La cruz

Alfredo is a film critic and after many years at work he is threatened with dismissal by his newspaper. To complicate matters, his wife Claudia has also deserted him, taken their two daughters and moved in with the famous painter Pablo. Alfredo's colleagues try to support him in these difficult times, that he mainly spends in an advanced state of inebriation. His reviews get worse and worse and after a clash with his boss he is sacked. He spends the first few days in the streets of Buenos Aires, shouting and screaming abuse at the world and anyone who will listen. Then he decides to bad-mouth Pablo to get his wife back. He pretends to be a painter and phones some of Pablo's old girl-friends to get some mud to throw. As a result he meets Eloisa. In the strange relationship that develops between them, Alfredo denies he is Pablo and then admits it. He certainly behaves in a pretty paranoid fashion.Alejandro Agresti, a festival veteran, serves a tasteful combination of dry and humorous dialogues, midlife-crisis problems and perverse pleasure about the life of a failure who has to bear his own cross without being able to count on our sympathy.