Glue. Historia adolescente en medio de la nada. (Glue: Adolescent Story in the Middle of Nowhere)

Reviewed by Rafael Ocasio, Agnes Scott Coll, Decafur, GA -- Críticas, 6/15/2008

(Argentina, 2006) color. Spanish (English subtitles). Picture This! 2006. DVD. $26.95. DRAMA

Lucas and Nacho are bored teenagers and best friends in a rural town in the Argentine Patagonia. They often feel at a loss; as Lucas puts it, “You can be an orphan even if you have parents because if you do not coincide with them in anything in any way, you are alone.” Their lives gravitate around bike riding in the dusty, desolate landscape, playing in their makeshift rock band, and thinking about girls. Well, Nacho is interested in girls. Lucas daydreams about the strong body of his pal. Director Alexis Dos Santos has said that the film is autobiographical, and that it offers his view of his teenage years, full of “…confusions and boiling hormones and thinking about your body changing everyday.”  A third character, Andrea, adds an interesting angle to a story about discovering one’s sexual orientation. The director uses an innovative technique that includes voiceover comments by the characters, which gives the film a documentary quality. Commenting on this element, Dos Santos said: “Instead of establishing set scenes, we would just follow the actors as if it were a documentary. And we were never sure what was going to happen in front of the camera.”  This film, which has won awards at the International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival in San Francisco and in Torino is highly recommended for general collections on Latin America cinema. See more information about this subject in Video Collection Development.