Photo: movie poster
He is not part of the avant-garde of current Argentine cinema, but the former commentator, turned director, Hernán Guerschuny, knows how to film. He demonstrated it in films seen in Cuba, such as The Critic (2013) and Double Discourse (2023). The latter has an introduction that, through the use of photography and montage, provides a tasty lesson in information economy on the screen. I recommend it to filmmakers.
For this reason, it is difficult to understand how a nonsense the size of Nahir (2024) was filmed, a feature film poorly conceived from the first to the last take. And it is equally incomprehensible that Metro Goldwyn Mayer / Prime Video has supported a product well below the qualitative average of the century-old house of the roaring lion.
The feature film is inspired by real events that occurred seven years ago in the southern nation, when Nahir Galarza, a 19-year-old girl from the rural community of Gualeguaychú, was accused of killing her boyfriend.
Currently in prison, she is the youngest woman to be sentenced to life imprisonment in the history of Argentina. Facts like this are guaranteed to have media resonance.
In addition to the echo in the local press, and Guerschuny’s film, the case gave rise to a two-part documentary. It was released this year and was also produced by Prime Video (Amazon service), a platform that imitates Netflix in the exploitation of true crime. This is the genre focused on the representation and analysis of real crimes.
Misguided in her display of irredeemably telefilmic expressions, Nahir errs in the framework of the script, in the way of weaving the story together and in tying up its loose ends; as well as in the general construction of the central character.
Neither the interpretations nor the work in the editing room nor the photographic work accompany it.
The script throws ideas into the ring that have no development or justification. For example, in the opening dance, when the young Nahir looks at her uncle with hatred. Yes, in the closing titles they state that he could have abused her in her childhood; but, for the purposes of the script, this element is not taken into account or incorporated. Therefore, the sequence is not dramatically valid.
Likewise, debutante mistakes occur, such as the one at minute 86, in the continuous scene in which she is sanctioned for life and enters prison, when the accompanying musical theme creates a very disruptive effect with a narration that is contrasted by the all.
The main problem with Nahir, the film, is that we never get to access or understand the Nahir character. This is due, in large part, to the notable deficiencies in the composition at the writing level. And in this type of cinema, more than necessary, this becomes essential, in order to decipher the meaning of the determinations of the executor of the crime.
In the long run, we never know if Nahir is a sick, resentful, traumatized person; or if it is someone else who kills for no reason or only as a result of circumstantial anger, without an inner world, someone who lives for the sake of living and does not express his emotions, if he has them.
Nahir’s acting defense, by singer/model Valentina Zenere, does little to counteract this last impression. His work borders on extreme coldness and creates a schism with the viewer.
