Contemporary Argentine Cinema by David William Foster (review)

Book Reviews257 addition to being a homecoming play; and while Rabe's Basic Training is unquestionably about initiation, it is also about the battlefield and qualifies somewhat Fenn's claim that few plays were actually set in Vietnam (185). Fenn supplies two valuable appendices on the chronology of Vietnam War events and a seven-page bibliography. Yet, disappointingly, his bibliography offers few titles later than 1985, with the exception of one or two from 1987, suggesting that his work has not been informed by the most recent work on Vietnam dramatists. But Vietnam War drama is not part of a closed canon but will expand as our awareness of the war continues into the next millennium. Fenn offers a much-needed first guide for that journey. PHILIP C. KOLIN University ofSouthern Mississippi DAVID WILLIAM FOSTER. Contemporary Argentine Cinema. Columbia: University ofMissouri Press, 1992. 164 p. Argentina's troubled political and cultural history during the period from 1976 to 1983 backgrounds the ten films that David William Foster analyzes in his new book. Foster arranges his selected films into three sections entitled "Historical Contexts," "Personal Projections," and "Love Stories." All three categories reflect the societal rifts caused by the brutality of the Proceso de Reorganización Nacional (Process of National Reorganization). No sooner had the architects of that ignominious era—the generals responsible for the "dirty war"—been arrested and taken to trial, than Argentine filmmakers began producing films that analyzed the period. All the movies that Foster examines were released between 1983 and 1987. Together, they include genre categories ranging from melodrama and drama to farce to science fiction to documentary. And, with greater or lesser intensity , they reveal concern or uneasiness about national identity. The stated purpose of the study presented in Contemporary Argentine Cinema includes an examination of the material chosen for filming and of the technical decisions made by the filmmakers, a look at the structural coherence of the films studied through an analysis of the ideological voice, and an exploration of the films as ideological texts. Although Foster's general tendency in his examination is more literary than cinematic, he carries out his task with measured success. Camila (María Luisa Bemberg, 1984), the first film analyzed in the book, is based on a well-known event in Argentine history. During the midnineteenth century government of Juan Manuel de Rosas, the cultural values of the newly formed country were shaken by an unusual domestic event: Camila O'Gorman, a young woman of a Buenos Aires landowning family, eloped with Ladislao Gutiérrez, a provincial priest. Rosas, unwilling to withstand the virulent criticism from his exiled opposition, had the pair shot by a firing squad. 258Rocky Mountain Review In his analysis of the film, Foster emphasizes the overdetermination of different elements in the film, a characteristic that allows only for a closed interpretation of it. Regrettably, in his extensive explanations of the term overdetermination and its derivatives, Foster himself overdetermines his use of the term under scrutiny and obscures his criticism through the use of rather labyrinthine prose. Foster observes that Bemberg loses sight of the fact that Ladislao represents a patriarchy parallel to the one that Camila's father, and the father of them all, Rosas, epitomize. Although several of Foster's examples do not accurately reflect what occurs in the film, nor what the dialogue actually says (notably the last voice-over of Ladislao and Camila), the final outcome of this consciously overwrought melodrama is indeed, as Foster explains, that patriarchy reigns supreme. It is not, however, that the director loses sight of this fact, as Foster states; María Luisa Bemberg is a very lucid director, and, as a feminist, she is painfully aware of the heavy hand of patriarchy during the time of Rosas, as well as in the present time. Bemberg's emphasis is definitely the blindness—a pervasive leitmotif in the film—and futility of Camila's passion in the face of such unbeatable odds. Camila reminds the viewer, precisely, of the destructive power of the oppressive influence of patriarchy, and inspires action. The Official Story, a movie directed by Luis Puenzo and released the following year, is set in March...