Potestad

Riding a subway, an aging doctor relives traumas associated with the kidnappings and killings of Argentina’s dirty war of the 70s, including the loss of his daughter. Director Luis Cesar D’Angiolillo adapted a play by actor and theater director Eduardo Pavlovsky, leading us through a procession of melodramatic memories and nightmares that are less evocative of Fellini and Bergman than of their heavier imitators (e.g., Sidney Lumet in The Pawnbroker); this 2001 Argentinean drama also reminded me of Arthur Miller, but not at his best. The suitably oppressive title, which means power, is glossed at both the beginning and end of the picture to make the feeling of doom even more inescapable. 89 min. (JR)

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