Familia rodante

Trapero’s début Mundo grúa, which won a VPRO Tiger Award in 2000, and his second feature El bonaerense were typical films of the ‘New Argentine Cinema’: a flourishing of films with an eye for the harsh social reality of Argentina, despite the economic crisis that hit the country in 2001. With his third film Familia rodante, Trapero has made a much more personal and lighter film, without losing style and substance. Based on anecdotes from his family and circle of friends, the film balances between being a droll road-movie and a colourful family drama. The 84-year-old grandma Emila (Gracina Chironi) is invited to be ‘matron of honour’ at the wedding of a distant niece in her birthplace on the border with Brazil. She invites her whole family to accompany her, and in a Chevy Viking ’56 turned into a house – a structure made by Trapero’s father – they set off on their journey. Familia rodante is a warm, vivacious film about family relationships, love and the life that gets its colour thanks to our personal choices and memories. Between the starting point Buenos Aires and the destination Misiones, all the anger, sorrow, attraction and warmth between four cramped generations come to the surface. A glimpse of Argentinian family life with plenty of humour, latent melancholy, moving music and beautiful, refined camerawork. (SdH)