13/02/2014 - Argentinian director Celina Murga is in the running in Berlin with a film which observes an unbearable, dysfunctional family situation through the eyes of one of its victims

It begins in medias res and, as Argentinian cinema does it so well, The Third Side of the River [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Celina Murga, a pupil of Martin Scorsese backed by several European funds including the World Cinema Fund of Berlin, takes us into the everyday life of a family while paying the kind of meticulous attention to situations and characters that makes us feel their perceptions and emotions. 

Not that the situation is clear from the start: while we think we are getting to know a nice family without any problems (in which the four children play together and the parents love each other), we realise, when seeing the father leave with one of the boys, that something is not quite right. In fact, Jorge (Daniel Veronese), whom his children address by his Christian name, lives a double life, with two women. We are not quite sure to what extent they accept each other's existence, nor what the children think about it all, though we get the clear impression that the situation causes a malaise in all concerned, which is never referred to – except by Jorge, who calmly comes and goes between his two homes and his various activities (he also has two jobs: doctor and ranch-owner).

The character we are most interested in is the eldest boy, Nicolás (Alián Devetac), the camera constantly focusing on his silent gaze (in addition to the central theme of childhood, the gaze will definitely have been a highly recurrent motif in this year's Berlinale competition). He knows that his mother sometimes cries, alone in her bedroom, and he feels it is his duty to protect and look after both her, his three brothers and sister, the father being mostly absent despite his probable feeling that he is managing everything wonderfully well: even though he distributes money to everyone, carefully shared out in envelopes, he nevertheless misses his daughter's Quinceañera without raising an eyebrow (yet it is the most important birthday in the life of a young South American girl). One could not, however, expect anything else from a man who places a sticker on his jeep announcing that he doesn't drink and drive, when it's far from the truth. 

While Nicolás tries to compensate for some of his father's failings, he is invited by him to follow in his footsteps, at the hospital, the ranch and in the bars where he can find loose women, as for Jorge, that's what being a man really means – whereas Nicolás, quite rightly, is appalled at the idea of chasing women with his father. Between the two completely incompatible roles he finds himself playing without having chosen or wanted them, and which  are making his life take a dreadful turn, the young man finds himself in a position so impossible and "solitary" that he decides to take a third path, the third side of the river in the title.

(Translated from French)