SmugKitZine Tied for the best movie I have ever seen

ScoobyWell Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

Sabah Hensley This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Walter Sloane Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

Spiked! spike-online.com Since its inception in the 1960s, the road movie genre has always represented adventure, debauchery and freedom. One is put in mind of Bonnie and Clyde charging along an open road leaving bodies and bank vaults in their wake, or Wyatt and Billy in Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider blowing joint smoke in the face of conformity.Argentinean director Pablo Giorgelli's debut feature Las Acacias embodies none of these conventions, but it is a road movie in the most essential sense of the phrase. It is a story about driving from point A to point B: middle-aged truck driver Rubén (Germán de Silva) has been asked by his boss to transport single mother Jacinta (Hebe Duarte) and her five-month-old daughter Anahí (Nayra Calle Mamani) to her cousin's house in Buenos Aires, where she hopes to find work. Other than the occasional stop to refuel and have dinner, it is a full 85 minutes of Rubén just getting on with the job.In the film's opening half hour we are constantly taunted with the possibility of conventional drama, yet it is dismissed at every turn. Going on Rubén's gruff demeanour, one assumes this may be a slightly dodgy arrangement, in which Jacinta has paid Rubén's boss to help her get out of the country. However, it turns out to be pretty much above board. When they are stopped at the border, one expects them to spout a web of lies to keep the shady truth from the inspectors, but in fact they merely explain themselves sincerely and are let through without any hassle. Similarly, the mystery surrounding Jacinta and Anahí, who she insists 'has no father', is never really explored. At one point, Ruben sees Jacinta crying, but instead of asking her what's wrong and give her the chance to tell her story, he walks away.After a while you're forced to confront the fact that the film isn't going to diverge at all from the straightforward route it set out to take. At the Sunday morning 'OAPs get in free' screening that I attended, a good few of the older patrons eventually gave up and walked out, unable to bear the boredom anymore and free from the desire to get their money's worth. Yet as gruellingly tedious as Las Acacias can be, if you persist you're gifted with a touching and surprisingly unique film experience.Unlike the road movie heroes of old, who took to the highway in search of adventure, driving is Ruben's profession and it isolates him from the rest of the world. Constantly hauling lumber from one place to the next, he is deprived of any human contact, and at the beginning he sees Jacinta and Anahí as a mere inconvenience. But in spite of Rubén's detachment and Jacinta's 'I've been hurt before' timidity, the two begin to bond. While the premise is admittedly a little corny, their relationship unfolds in a completely natural way, emanating out of brief conversations and fleeting glances. Of course, this is all far from exciting, but Giorgelli's pared-down style brings a reality and poignancy to the narrative, which is in itself rather captivating.The most diligent viewer should be forgiven for phasing out from time to time, but boredom seems to be an essential reaction which the film seeks to invoke. Forced to spend an hour-and-a-half imprisoned in Rubén's truck, we become like another passenger, and while your eyes may occasionally wander or you may even nod off, you nevertheless find yourself engrossed in their journey. The film builds softly to a bittersweet ending and having been so closely subjected to this would-be courtship yourself, it is all the more heartrending.Las Acacias is a road movie about as exciting as a long commute. Nothing really happens and even less is said. But within its static, self- contained world, something pretty remarkable takes place.

redread23 This is one of the most boring, pointless films I have ever sat through. I fell asleep three times. It is just a truck drive through Argentina where the driver takes 60 minutes of the viewers time to pluck up the courage to ask his lady passenger for a date - to go for another truck ride next week. The reviews that I read before seeing this, alluded to much depth and in the performances which more than made up for the lack of dialogue. I was expecting a far higher level of subtlety and gentle revealing of the characters and their stories. Little was revealed and that was clumsily told. No cultural insight or visuals about the places they drive through. Little background or depth to either character. Just lots of driving ... oh and a few toilet stops for the baby. Dull would be a compliment. The baby pulls some cute faces.

ched27 Terrible film do not waste your time , others who give this a good rating are misleading you ,it is nothing but a man driving a truck, he picks up a woman and they have some very limited interaction during the journey, they barely speak and when they do it is not very interesting, do not watch! When I left the cinema I felt like I had lost 2 hours of my life. Imagine watching paint dry and this is what this film is like. If you enjoy being bored then feel free to watch, maybe if you have an amazing imagination and can imagine you are not watching it then you will have a good time , but I would suggest you could do that at home. The worst film I have ever seen.

slowboatmo The film "les acacias" has few dialogues, yet it has a mysterious power to rivet the audiences from the beginning to the end. One has to attribute its success to every one of its meticulously crafted shots that is full of meaning and significance. The audiences get to observe and to appreciate the boredom of the life of truck driver but are never bored themselves since it is precisely the kind of boredom that they can emphasize with. As the movie goes along, two new characters, the woman and her baby, are introduced. Yet their presence on the screen is so natural that we can no longer differentiate their lives from the truckdriver's. The director manages to capture the authenticity of human interaction so well that we are not even aware that we are watching a movie with fictitious plot and characters. We feel that we are observing real life unfolding at every moment of the film, which we savor eagerly as we know that it will slip away both for us and the characters in the film. At the end, we can't help but shed a few tears for the brutal separation that will keep the three anonymous strangers apart forever. For me, the movie "les acacias" is one of the most realistic, touching films that I have seen. The height of realism it has achieved, combined with the depth of its meaning make it a film that is not easily surpassed by most modern films of this genre.