Vil romance

The asymmetric love relationship between a youngster and a man – the former a survivor of a dysfunctional family and with nothing to do; the latter an irascible illegal-weapons dealer – is the unexpected subject chosen by Campusano to begin outlining a portrait of disenfranchised community life in some localities in the peripheral areas of Buenos Aires.

From here on, a whole symbolic universe which is barely imagined, and not often filmed, becomes a territory full of stories in which there are idiosyncratic codes, behaviours, and ways of using language. Roberto and Raul’s homosexual love is far away from the bourgeois codification of gay culture. What we see here is part of a culture born out of material precarity where family, friendship, economy and desire move in unsuspected lanes. The praiseworthy element here is the way Campusano transforms the traces of reality into a filmic cosmos peopled by remarkable characters.