For all that it’s tremendously shot and vehemently acted, this movie from Argentinian director Diego Lerman – about a substitute teacher – is weirdly unsatisfying in terms of the story it has to tell: contrived, cliched, with secondary characters sketched in and a perfunctory and somewhat truncated car-chase climax.
Lucio (Juan Minujín) is a divorced poet and critic in Buenos Aires who winds up having to take a substitute teaching job in a tough inner-city school teaching literature to glowering kids (one of whom, inevitably, is a supernaturally talented rapper). Lucio’s dad, nicknamed “The Chilean” and played by the veteran Chilean actor Alfredo Castro, is a local community worker and cafe owner with connections to the mayor. Lucio’s dad is also a fierce enemy of a local drug-dealing mobster called El Perro, who reportedly has political ambitions of his own, and the Chilean employs Dylan (Lucas Arrua), a likable, smart kid from Lucio’s class, in his kitchen.
