Argentine Malaise

The Terrace. The ten sullen teenagers are overprivileged, amoral and aimless, and their upper-crust parents are too obtuse or indifferent to notice.

One day an ill wind blows the kids together like discarded gum wrappers at a Buenos Aires sidewalk cafe. Off they go to the rooftop terrace of a skyscraper apartment building for an afternoon and night of drinking, violence, sadistic games, partner swapping and halting homosexual overtures.

At dawn, a helicopter swoops out of the hazy white sky, hovers above the pool and terrace. The teen-agers stand at the bleary end of their orgy, having threatened to leap to death from their lofty playground if any grownups intrude. A black-frocked, airborne priest addresses them by loudspeaker: "You wanted some fun, fine. Letting off steam is healthy. We face an inspiring future--don't play into the hands of the Reds." The kids laugh. "So does God's word make itself heard," sneers one.

At his best, Director Leopoldo Torre Nilsson, Argentina's foremost film maker, studies his homeland with an unblinking poet's eye that invites comparison to Antonioni and Bergman. He deftly juggles modish effects, melding sun and skin into the languid what-next boredom of a summer afternoon or exposing the backbone of a scene with the blinding suddenness of a flashbulb popping in the dark.

But The Terrace is ultimately superficial, separated only by stylistic virtuosity from a hundred sensation-seeking B movies depicting teens on a rampage.

Its delinquents are mostly dullards, victims of no specific evil unless it be that handy malaise compounded of restlessness, lack of love, excessive materialism and the Bomb. A valid set of anxieties, which current moviemakers sometimes stuff into the places where they used to put plot.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.