Martin (Hache)

An Argentinian film director exiled in Spain tries to become reacquainted with his son Martin (also known as “Hache”), who’s come to Madrid from Buenos Aires to recover from a drug overdose. Two other key characters in the story, and in many respects the most fascinating, are the director’s girlfriend and his gay best friend, who partially play the roles of surrogate parents for the boy. This excellent 1997 Argentinian-Spanish coproduction, directed by Adolfo Aristarain and shown at the last New York Film Festival, carries the kind of personal conviction, novelistic depth, and sense of lived experience that we seldom get in movies nowadays, including complex, three-dimensional characters and a plot that proves as unpredictable as they are. This is the only film I’ve seen at this year’s Chicago Latino Film Festival that I’d consider seeing a second time. (JR)