Glaxo Review: A Flickering Portrait of Argentina’s Dark Past

When you first sit down to watch Glaxo, you’re immediately reminded of the way a bad sequel feels – familiar, ambitious, but somehow a little off‑beat. Director‑writer Benjamín Naishtat, the man behind the sharply comic Rojo, decides to go back even further in time, mining the early years of the post‑Perón military regime in the 1950s. It’s a bold move, especially because the source material – Hernán Ronsino’s short novel – is notoriously tangled, jumping between four points of view and a non‑linear timeline.

In the hands of a more seasoned adapter the mess might have been smoothed into a tighter thriller. Naishtat trims the narrative just enough to call it a drama about friendship and betrayal (the opening voice‑over even says it outright), yet the resulting structure still feels a touch‑and‑go, as if the film is constantly reminding you that it’s trying to stitch together pieces that were never meant to fit.

The story lands in 1957, in the sleepy town of Chivilcoy, where a hard‑nosed police officer, Ramón Folcada (Marcelo Subiotto), arrives with his striking wife “La Negra” Miranda (Lali Espósito). The locals gossip, the teenage boys stare, and one of them – Miguelito Barrios (young Joaquín Bonadeo, adult Manu Fanego) – embarks on a reckless affair with the married woman while learning to break in Folcada’s horses. It’s a premise that could sizzle, but the chemistry often feels more comic than erotic, a missed opportunity that leaves the tension flat.

Subiotto, who previously played a meek philosopher in Naishtat’s “Puan,” now channels a Robert‑De Niro‑type gangster, delivering a scene that’s oddly thrilling: he corners two Mormon missionaries (Pablo Turturiello and Brunno Radaveli) in a blunt, nationalist tirade that borders on farce. The humor lands because the missionaries’ horrendous Spanish is absurdly funny, yet the joke soon gives way to a darker, more tragic turn that the film never fully embraces.

Visually, the movie is a love letter to 1950s Argentina. Cinematographer Pedro Sotero (who also shot “Rojo”) paints the rural landscape with a nostalgic glow, while the production design – from the dusty town square to the sock‑hop where La Negra first turns heads – feels lovingly crafted. Filming actually took place in Brazil, a practical decision by producer Rodrigo Teixeira, but the illusion holds up surprisingly well.

The score, composed by Shigeru Umebayashi, tries to lift the romance with the sweeping, melancholic strings you might recognize from “In the Mood for Love.” Unfortunately, the music often outpaces the film’s emotional depth; it’s as if the soundtrack is trying to convince the audience to feel something that the picture itself can’t deliver.

What really hurts “Glaxo” is its indecision. It wavers between period‑piece nostalgia, uneasy comedy, and outright tragedy, never committing fully to any of them. The betrayal at the heart of the story – hinted at from the start – remains vague, making the climax feel more like an afterthought than a payoff.

It’s worth noting Naishtat’s trajectory. After two early, more arthouse entries (“History of Fear,” “The Movement”), he found a confident voice with the black‑humored “Rojo” and the philosophically charged “Puan.” Both films showed a filmmaker capable of balancing style with substance. “Glaxo,” by contrast, feels under‑powered, a disappointment given the talent in front of and behind the camera.

In short, “Glaxo” is a handsome piece of cinema that tries to say a lot but ends up saying a little too little. If you’re a fan of Naishtat’s previous work, you’ll probably watch it out of curiosity, but you might leave the theater wishing the story had been a bit more daring, a bit more honest, and a lot less unsure of itself.