It is often said that the best way to tackle a biographical narrative feature is to offer a chapter of someone’s life that speaks to their whole experience, an idea that’s cleverly applied to a much larger body in Benjamin Naishtat’s “Glaxo,” an adaptation of Hernán Ronsino’s novel that aimed to get at the root of the culture of fear that pervaded the second half of the 20th century in Argentina when dictatorships came into power and the law became fungible to settle scores and disappear anyone standing in opposition. Naishtat, who can be counted on to have a sense of humor in taking on serious subject matter with wily films such as “Rojo” and “Puan” (co-directed with María Alché) under his belt, delivers an engrossing drama that can find impunity both ridiculous and horrifying.
Some set-up is required to tell the full story of “Glaxo” over three different time periods, so naturally Naishat invokes “The Terminator” to help things along when Flaco (Esteban Bigliardi) tries explaining the plot to a friend when what happened in the past rippled into the future. Flaco doesn’t compare himself to the T-100, but it wouldn’t be exactly inaccurate when just getting out of prison, he is adjusting to a new world than the one he left and consumed with getting revenge when he was wrongfully incarcerated. The details why are the film’s driving mystery, but when it cuts to 1959, it is clear it is definitely going to have something to do with Ramon Folcada (Marcelo Subiotto), a cop whose loyalties shift towards the government superiors installed soon after Juan Peron was overthrown and inevitably becomes a part of one of the earliest round-ups of political dissidents. The arrest of a group of Argentinian citizens who can be expected never to be heard from again the moment a home is raided by police is laced throughout the film with Folcada taking more and more responsibility for what happens after making the early mistake of agreeing to the men’s demand that he make receipts for any items that were confiscated from them so they can be retrieved. It’s a promise he has to gradually backtrack from, reflecting an incremental moral rot of those from an entire generation that found it easier to comply with the demands of a dictatorship rather than resist it.
The film’s primary storyline finds Folcada retired and living in Chivilcoy in 1966 where his background with the police is never spoken aloud in public, but rumors fly in secret about his past and his much younger wife Miranda (Lali Espósito), who is known to dance the night away at the same parties where a teenage Flaco and his friends Miguelito (Joaquin Bonadeo) and Lucio (Esteban Lamothe) attend. To differentiate the time periods, Naishtat films in various aspect ratios (1959 is a square, 1966 fits a 1:85 frame while 1984 get the ultra-widescreen treatment), but each era is full of color both in a literal sense with vibrant pastels giving the drama a real energy as well as a narrative one when no matter how dark the situation gets, a little levity is tastefully applied here and there. It is absurd after all that Folcada was rewarded for his complicity with the government with a quiet small town life where his sins would likely never be found out, and it’d be just about perfect if he didn’t come to believe his wife was cheating on him, enlisting Flaco’s friend Miguelito to spy on her under the guise of being a horse trainer.
When Folcada brings the tactics he learned working for the national government of incentivizing informing on neighbors and a shadow justice system to Chivilcoy, nowhere in Argentina would seem immune and “Glaxo” suddenly doesn’t seem like it’s separated by different timelines, but one fluid narrative, leading to one generation forced into the same ugly choices as the last. Nothing is pretty about what happened, but the history is laid out elegantly enough that the true cost to the public of shadowy state operators can be seen and by making a tragedy a bit of a comedy, Naishtat impressively closes the distance that often prevents a real reckoning from occurring.
“Glaxo” will screen again at the Toronto Film Festival at the Scotiabank on September 12th at 9:30 pm and September 19th at 6:30 pm.