Reviews

Moving, if quite sentimental story of a young woman receiving through her father the letters her mother wrote to her before dying. She gets the first on her Bat Mitzva day. The second when she is about to get married, the third when she is expecting her first baby and the last, when she is in trouble and has great difficulty deciding how to proceed.

Even though the action is framed within the life of a traditional Argentinian Jewish family, the core of the plot is universal to any mother-daughter relationship regardless of race or religion. We see a caring, loving mother facing the dilemma of wanting to be by her daughter's side at the most important times of her life, knowing full well she will be gone. The letters are her way to overcome the impossible, to talk to her child and be with her when she is most needed.

I have not seen any other movie or play with a similar plot. It touches the heart of every parent. Is it a bit of a tear jerker? I have to say yes, and yet, I think it is quite honest as it deals with the loss of a parent at an early age, teen pregnancy and crucial decisions in the life of a teenager.

Well acted, in particular, by Gimena Accardi, who gets great support by Manu Fullola and Martin Seefeld. The photography of Dario Sabina is superb, with exteriors of Israel and the Argentinian countryside (Province of San Luis ?).

The material of this film is shockingly obscene. It is supposed to be a "study" of joke-telling showing the "creativity" and different styles of famous comedians. You will see those comedians telling over and over the same basic "joke" with personal variations as they modify or add layers upon layers of coarse, revolting and absurd images. This old vaudeville joke pretends to be funny. Now, if you find that endless descriptions of incest, rape, masturbation, bestiality, defecation, urination, vomiting and the eating of bodily wastes is funny to you, may be you will agree. Depending on your age, personality, sensibility and your desire to explore the history and psychology of the "dirty joke", may be, you will come out of the theater thinking you saw an interesting and thought provoking movie. I did find "The Aristocrats" thoroughly uninteresting. After a while I was numbed by the disgusting, repetitive and predictable material. I was bored to death. Personally, I could not find any redeeming value in this film. For me it was a real waste of time and money.