A match made in adversity

By Kevin Thomas

Nov. 17, 2005 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

NOTABLE among the films in the American Cinematheque’s Argentina New Cinema program tonight through Sunday is Jorge Gaggero’s captivating “Cama Adentro” (“Live-In Maid”). It affords Norma Aleandro, international grande dame of Argentine movies, a wonderful role and teams her effectively with the formidable Norma Argentina.

The film is set in the country’s economic crisis of 2001, which has caught Aleandro’s pampered and privileged Beba Pujol in its tightening grip. A chic, middle-aged single woman with a grown daughter living in Spain, she lives in a spacious, well-appointed Buenos Aires condo with Dora (Argentina), her devoted maid of 28 years.

Beba has a line of cosmetics, highlighted by a much-praised mudpack facial product, but that is not keeping the wolf from the door. She bravely puts up the best front possible for her friends and clients, and Dora thoughtfully buys cheap whiskey and pours it into empty bottles of costlier imported brands. But the women can stave off the day only so long. Dora, who hasn’t been paid in months, must decide whether to look for a paying job. The events leading to this day and its aftermath allow Gaggero to probe a bond that may have the potential to endure deeply ingrained class differences and shifts in status.

Beba has an inherent sense of entitlement, but underneath the glossy surface she is an intelligent woman quite possibly capable of being transformed by adversity for the better. By contrast, the content Dora knows her traditional place in the social scheme, accepts it without complaint but knows her worth. She has a self-acceptance and capacity for enjoying life that Beba would most certainly envy if she were ever to know Dora as well as Dora knows her.

Malle highlight

LACMA’s “Human, Too Human: The Films of Louis Malle” continues with “The Fire Within” (“Le Feu Follet”), a 1963 adaptation of Pierre Drieu La Rochelle’s novel that is one of Malle’s finest films. This somber work is highlighted by an extraordinary performance by the late Maurice Ronet, an always reliable leading man who is much more than that as an alcoholic contemplating suicide. On the eve of his departure from a sanitarium after four months of drying out, he realizes he’ll soon be back on the bottle because he is unable to come up with a reason not to. As he starts considering killing himself, he goes to Paris to visit old friends.

With every encounter, the viewer learns more about him -- as he does himself. In contemplating death, he realizes all his friends are guilty of compromises he does not intend to settle for, despite an admittedly misspent youth, and his rounds conclude in a dinner party in which savagery lurks just beneath the surface of civility. “The Fire Within” unfolds with classic simplicity, its elegiac quality heightened by harshly grayed images and an evocative piano piece by Erik Satie. (Screening at 7:30 p.m. Saturday is Malle’s suspenseful 1958 debut feature, “Elevator to the Gallows,” starring Jeanne Moreau.)

Tati trio

This weekend, American Cinematheque will screen Jacques Tati’s 70-millimeter “Playtime” (1967), in which Tati brought back, after a 14-year absence, his beloved M. Hulot, the tall Frenchman -- played by Tati -- who lopes along at a slight forward tilt, forever running afoul of all manner of modern conveniences. This time he’s job-hunting and gets caught up in a dehumanizing skyscraper city. This documentary-like account of 24 hours in a world of steel and glass is also an acute contemporary satire that emerges nevertheless as singularly affirmative.

On Sunday the Aero shows the two films that brought Tati international renown as a director and comedian: “Jour de Fete” (1947) and “M. Hulot’s Holiday” (1953).

Complex Menkes

On Sunday, Filmforum presents a look at avant-garde L.A. works with its Women Filmmakers I program, which features Nina Menkes’ “The Bloody Child” (1996). Leave it to Menkes, a major experimental filmmaker, to have found a genuinely fresh and bold way of confronting the viewer with violence. The maker of “The Great Sadness of Zohara,” “Magdalena Viraga” and “Queen of Diamonds” took a newspaper article as her inspiration for this film.

Much of her beautiful, utterly demanding and enlightening picture takes place on a Mojave Desert highway, where a group of Marines awaits backup in bringing in another Marine. Recently returned from the Gulf War, this Marine has murdered his wife, and her bloodied body lies in the back seat of a car.

The film’s key figure is a Marine captain, played by Tinka Menkes (the director’s sister and collaborator), who is the arresting officer and absorbs the impact of the dead woman’s spirit. This is expressed in surreal imagery intercut with an otherwise near-documentary film to suggest the ways in which people internalize violence and its myriad effects. As with Menkes’ other films, “The Bloody Child” warrants further viewings and greater consideration of its complex implications.

Screenings

Argentina New Cinema

* “Cama Adentro”: 7:30 p.m. Sunday

Where: Egyptian Theatre, 6712 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood

Info: (323) 466-FILM

Louis Malle retrospective

* “The Fire Within”: 7:30 p.m. Friday

Where: L.A. County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., L.A.

Info: (323) 857-6010

Jacques Tati tribute

* “Playtime”: 7:30 p.m. today and Saturday at the Aero; also Nov. 25-27 at the Egyptian

* “Jour de Fete” and “M. Hulot’s Holiday”: 7:30 p.m. Sunday