The eponymous carancho, which translates as "vulture", in Pablo Trapero's sixth feature is, as one may expect from the nickname, a lawyer of dubious morals. Actually, to be crystal clear, he is not a lawyer but a counselor, a middle-aged man named Sosa (the great Ricardo Darin) with salt-and-pepper hair, small, piercing eyes and a nose that resembles an eagle's beak who has lost his license under some especially shadowy circumstances that are never revealed. An ambulance chaser for an even more elusive and foreboding ring of corrupt lawyers and policemen (imaginatively named The Foundation), Sosa plans for nothing as much as leaving the confines of his ambivalently sinister overlords once his license is reinstated but in Trapero's San Justo, cutting off ties in any business seems to come with the promise of eminent catastrophe.
What with its once-was status as one of Argentina's industrial centers, San Justo initially seems to be a setting that respects and values liberties more than the prison in which Trapero's last film, Lion's Den, was set but the fiscal and sociological constraints that the city's corruption has put on a large contingency of its population make them one and the same. Sosa is at once a victim and a facilitator of this psychological state, which is probably what originally sparks his interest in ambulance medic Lujan, who is played by the intelligent and lovely Martina Gusman, Trapero's wife and star of half of his work to date. They meet-cute over a car-crash victim and become intimate quickly, thanks to an ambulance driver who looks out for Sosa and found Lujan her job.
Sosa's reformation with Lujan, who herself harbors a nasty drug habit, is halted when Sosa orchestrates a set-up for the Foundation and ends up killing the homeless alcoholic he schemed with. Leap forward a bit and Lujan has begun clocking hours at an ER while ignoring any and all phone calls from Sosa after learning of his shady dealings. She still shoots up and, eventually, even returns to Sosa in the midst of his separation from the Foundation, which seems natural in the sinister and cynical atmosphere that Trapero has made palpable in this suitably grimy and largely nocturnal noir. Her return promises romance but it also promises dread as the Foundation predictably starts strong-arming Sosa and beating on Lujan for a debt that they say Sosa owes.
Before the film spirals into its batshit cataclysm of an ending, Trapero handles this derivative material very well, imbuing it with the scornful mood befitting of a city that has lived to see most of its major social faculties corroded. Working from a script he co-wrote with Alejandro Fadel, Martin Mauregui and Santiago Mitre, Trapero ties these rotting institutions not directly to the flaws in Sosa and Lujan but makes a clear case for how corruption in institutions further complicates and in some cases unearths and enables personal desperation. Ultimately, however, this idea is merely toyed with and Trapero puts more focus on the immediacy of his chosen genre mechanics and his two lead performers, only the latter of which truly pays off.
Trapero's work is tight and moody but it certainly isn't very imaginative. His versatility and his technical abilities are what typify his career, which has produced at least one gem in 2004's The Rolling Family. For all its narrative pleasures, Carancho would prove forgettable if not for the oddly tender turns that Trapero yields from Darin and Gusman. In a lovely scene, Darin bets Gusman a kiss that four cars in a row will run a red light. Five run the light, suggesting that even their brief romance owes something to corruption.
What with its once-was status as one of Argentina's industrial centers, San Justo initially seems to be a setting that respects and values liberties more than the prison in which Trapero's last film, Lion's Den, was set but the fiscal and sociological constraints that the city's corruption has put on a large contingency of its population make them one and the same. Sosa is at once a victim and a facilitator of this psychological state, which is probably what originally sparks his interest in ambulance medic Lujan, who is played by the intelligent and lovely Martina Gusman, Trapero's wife and star of half of his work to date. They meet-cute over a car-crash victim and become intimate quickly, thanks to an ambulance driver who looks out for Sosa and found Lujan her job.
Sosa's reformation with Lujan, who herself harbors a nasty drug habit, is halted when Sosa orchestrates a set-up for the Foundation and ends up killing the homeless alcoholic he schemed with. Leap forward a bit and Lujan has begun clocking hours at an ER while ignoring any and all phone calls from Sosa after learning of his shady dealings. She still shoots up and, eventually, even returns to Sosa in the midst of his separation from the Foundation, which seems natural in the sinister and cynical atmosphere that Trapero has made palpable in this suitably grimy and largely nocturnal noir. Her return promises romance but it also promises dread as the Foundation predictably starts strong-arming Sosa and beating on Lujan for a debt that they say Sosa owes.
Before the film spirals into its batshit cataclysm of an ending, Trapero handles this derivative material very well, imbuing it with the scornful mood befitting of a city that has lived to see most of its major social faculties corroded. Working from a script he co-wrote with Alejandro Fadel, Martin Mauregui and Santiago Mitre, Trapero ties these rotting institutions not directly to the flaws in Sosa and Lujan but makes a clear case for how corruption in institutions further complicates and in some cases unearths and enables personal desperation. Ultimately, however, this idea is merely toyed with and Trapero puts more focus on the immediacy of his chosen genre mechanics and his two lead performers, only the latter of which truly pays off.
Trapero's work is tight and moody but it certainly isn't very imaginative. His versatility and his technical abilities are what typify his career, which has produced at least one gem in 2004's The Rolling Family. For all its narrative pleasures, Carancho would prove forgettable if not for the oddly tender turns that Trapero yields from Darin and Gusman. In a lovely scene, Darin bets Gusman a kiss that four cars in a row will run a red light. Five run the light, suggesting that even their brief romance owes something to corruption.
