Pure humanity on display

Review

Litigante (M, 93 mins) Directed by Franco Lolli Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett ★★★★

In Spanish with English subtitles

In present day Bogota, Silvia is having what we might all recognise as a particularly bloody awful few weeks.

Her mother, with whom she enjoys a prickly and combative relationship, is going downhill fast with cancer.

At work, where Silvia is a legal counsel to a quite probably corrupt official, an inquiry is threatening to send her career up in flames and possibly even end with Silvia doing time.

At home, her son is being bullied and harassed for not having a dad around the house.

So, when Silvia is tormented by a vastly self-satisfied journalist, who later flirts with her at a party, are we actually surprised that Silvia finds the vaguely oafish Abel attractive, and then starts a tentative relationship with him? People in miserable situations usually go on to make lousy choices, as we all know. Franco Lolli’s second feature – after 2014’s lovely Gente de Bien – is a sharply and compassionately observed moment in time, unfolding in an all-too-relatable way.

First-time actor Carolina Sanin – she is also Lolli’s cousin – brings a world-weariness to the lead that every working single parent will relate to, while keeping at a low smoulder her fury at the indignities of her workplace and the complicated palette of emotions her mother’s mortality is unearthing. Litigante is a wonderfully well assembled, performed and written piece of work.

It’s not always easy to watch, but the sheer insight and intelligence on display here lifts it far above the gruelling or exhausting ride this same story could have yielded in lesser hands. Go, and revel in a perfectly drawn slice of humanity, honestly shared.