Review: The Aerial (3/5)

The Aerial (La Antena)
(Esteban Sapir):
Valeria Bertuccelli, Alejandro Urdapilleta, Julieta Cardinali, Rafael Ferro, Florencia Raggi.
Running time: 90 minutes.

In 1927, when Fritz Lang’s Metropolis hit the screen, the world was shaping into totalitarian nightmare. His dystopian futurism looks eerie today knowing the trauma that followed. Argentine director Esteban Sapir’s The Aerial is a post-modern silent movie in thrall to Lang’s great film, the mood of film noir Lang helped to inspire and later shape, and the fantasy of George Méliès’ 1902 short A Trip To The Moon. The story is about a city without a voice, under the thumb of a TV corporation. People eat TV food and the only person who doesn’t talk with intertitles is the mysterious Voice (Florencia Raggi) who is kidnapped. It’s a world full of classic cars, fantastic machines and melodramatic violins. Esteban is in thrall to his visual delights. And so he should, but the story is not as rich as the sumptuous set designs. His is a cautionary fable about the amnesia of television, but it is strangely toothless: unlike Guy Maddin’s recent cinepoetry which finds something new out of something old, The Aerial is beautiful but pretentious retro-ism. More of a curiosity.