A great deal of movie-affection courses through “A Useful Life,” an ingratiating sliver of a film from Uruguay. At only 67 minutes, this film is wise enough to make its observations and move along.
Much of “A Useful Life” is set at a film society in Montevideo. This organization (a real one)
is called Cinemateca Uruguaya, and it is running into financial problems after years of shrinking audiences.
The shuttering of this cinematic shrine hits especially hard with the manager, Jorge, who’s been working there for 25 years. What’s a cinephile to do when his days are no longer filled with showtimes and introductions and planning the next series tribute to an obscure Portuguese director the public isn’t really all that interested in?
Director Federico Veiroj’s film unfolds in glimpses and shards. We don’t see the major scenes (the theater actually closing, for instance), but we get enough information to know what’s going on. A lot of what’s charming about the movie is in these little details: Jorge trying to cut off his loquacious boss during a weekly radio show, or herding a visiting director around.
The second half of the film follows Jorge as he shuffles about town, gets a haircut (believe it or not, a wonderful scene), and screws up his courage to ask an acquaintance out on a date.
All of this is immeasurably enhanced by the non-actor who plays Jorge. He is a large, awkward man named Jorge Jellinek, and he is evidently a real-life film critic in Uruguay. I’m not sure if this movie signals a trend, but I can say that so far the idea of casting a film critic in the leading role of a film has not caught on around these parts. I’m not bitter.
“A Useful Life” glides along on a whimsical spirit, buoyed by an interesting music score drawn from various Uruguayan composers, an effect that lends a certain scale to Jorge’s otherwise modest problems.
This movie shows at the Northwest Film Forum, which is running the same sort of program that the Cinemateca Uruguaya is (the latter is actually still in business, thankfully). Patrons walking out of the movie will doubtless look more closely at their own little temple of movie love.
“A Useful Life” (three stars)
A whimsical film from Uruguay, about what happens when the local film society must close and a longtime employee faces the world without showtimes.
Told in elliptical terms, the film has great movie-love and its own charm, located largely in the unlikely figure of the awkward non-actor (Jorge Jellinek-actually a film critic) who plays the lead. In Spanish, with English subtitles.
Rating: Not rated, probably PG for subject matter
Now showing: Northwest Film Forum
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