It’s been a decade since Daniel Burman completed the loose trilogy of films that launched the writer-director to international renown (“Waiting For The Messiah,” “Lost Embrace,” and “Family Law”), and even longer since he helped to kick off the new wave of Argentinian cinema. With his new film, “The Tenth Man,” Burman once again returns to his hometown of Buenos Aires, to the tightly populated Once neighborhood, and even to a protagonist named Ariel — only this time the results are far more mixed, the story more muted, and the characters more shakily drawn.
The film, like many of Burman’s others, follows Ariel (here played by Alan Sabbagh, not Daniel Hendler), a New York transplant returning home to Buenos Aires to reconnect with his father Usher, who runs a local foundation in Once. Leaving behind his dancer girlfriend, Ariel arrives in the city’s lively bustle only to find Usher physically absent. He constantly calls Ariel, and everyone else, to direct them from afar, but despite Ariel’s frustrations, Usher stays a sort of omnipresent ghost, never showing his face but always pulling the strings.
In Usher’s absence, Ariel is pulled into the complex mechanisms of the family foundation that works to get meat, pharmaceuticals, and what appears to be almost everything else, to those in need in Once. The foundation also supplies many of the film’s more overt jokes — one highlight concerning a hospitalized boy and his need for unprocurable velcro shoes.
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As Ariel gets pulled further into his father’s orbit — running errands, settling feuds, cleaning out the apartments of the recently deceased — he begins to find himself enamored with Eva (Julieta Zylberberg of 2014’s hilarious “Wild Tales”), a near-mute who has taken refuge in Usher’s care to escape mysterious problems. Surrounding everything is the complex and physically stifling presence of devout Judaism, a faith that Ariel long ago left behind.
Certainly, “The Tenth Man” is a well observed film, packed to the brim with the quirks and ticks of a lively, culturally profuse neighborhood like Once, but as the film meanders along — the plot stumbling haphazardly and without any ostensible direction aside of chronology — the animated Jewish quarter begins to feel like the movie’s only reason for existence. Ariel tumbles in circles during the days of the week (by which the film is delineated); it seems as though wherever he goes, he winds up back at the foundation, dragging us along with him.
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Normally, with Burman’s work, that wouldn’t be a problem. But here, Sabbagh’s iteration of Ariel, a Burman stand-in, is exceedingly bland. Unlike Hendler, he is not handsome, nor is he charismatic — not that either is really a deal-breaker. Rather, it simply spoils some of the film’s goodwill when Eva, seemingly for no apparent reason, takes a liking to the irritable Ariel, going so far as to sleep with him even after sticking with orthodoxy and going to great lengths to avoid being touched by any men. Again, it doesn’t necessarily ruin the film, but why, in films directed by men, must bland, underwhelming male protagonists be so irrationally desired by smart, attractive women? If anything, it’s the fantasy that dislodges “The Tenth Man” from the more grounded absurdity and soul-searching at its core.
The film shines in the moments when it finds energy, when Daniel Ortega’s handheld camera work bobs and weaves into the intimacy of Ariel’s space, most notably when he follows Eva to a synagogue where several orthodox men strap Tefillin to him and bathe him. In these scenes “The Tenth Man” feels alive, only to be deflated again by static scenes more interested in Once than Ariel. Which is really where the film’s deepest flaws lie: “The Tenth Man” is about a neighborhood with a distinct pulse, and Ariel is, for all intents and purposes, merely our cipher, our lens through which to see Once, but the balance is askew. Ariel is an empty character, with little motivation, who reacts senselessly to things, and Once, burdened with such underdeveloped characters, wilts.
“The Tenth Man” is at times an intimate, quiet gem, but, at others, it’s a sluggish, airless work. In returning to such familiar territory, Burman is tapping into the best of what he’s done, only to give again exactly what’s expected of him. The results are mixed; a quizzical marriage of growth and a retreading of familiar themes that never fully coalesce or reach their potential. [C]
