Argentinean director Benjamín Naishtat garnered notice about 15 years ago, primarily with a trio of innovative, highly unusual feature films. 2014’s History of Fear was a nearly abstract nocturne focused on the various ways that a society can break down, turning its participants against one another. On a meta-level, it was about the different ways anxieties are mass-produced in order to keep the populace docile. Even better was Naishtat’s follow-up, 2015’s The Movement. Set in the Pampas in the 19th century, the film was a crucible of conflicting political impulses and crossed allegiances, in which desperate men swear fealty to whoever holds the gun. Somewhat more conventional but equally tense was 2018’s Rojo. In that film, a prominent lawyer has an altercation with a stranger in a restaurant. From that point on, he is under the microscope of those who would very soon consolidate their power into the 1976 dictatorship.
To say that Glaxo is a disappointment is a bit misleading. It is a reasonably well-crafted period piece that uses the post-Peronist junta period as the backdrop for a tale of personal betrayal and regret. Bookended by scenes from 1984, most of the film takes place in the mid-’50s, when the main characters are in their late teens. Like Naishtat’s earlier films, Glaxo is about the ways that craven individuals ingratiate themselves to those in power, but unlike his previous films, Glaxo recreates small-town Argentina in too-perfect, almost nostalgic tones. The then-and-now element feels incredibly familiar, a sense only amplified by the extensive narration, much of which seems to be taken directly from Hernán Ronsino’s source novel.
In the opening scene, two men are watching The Terminator in a half-empty theater. Vardemann (Esteban Bigliardi) is explaining the plot to his friend Bicho (Alan Sabbagh). In the course of their conversation, we realize that Vardemann has just gotten out following a very long stretch in prison. We hear about another old friend, Miguelito, who is dying. People want to know whether Vardemann will see Miguelito, and then we return to the men’s young adulthood in the ‘50s, where Naishtat fills in the extensive backstory of this friend group. But watch carefully, because an even earlier period is depicted in short bursts within the primary narrative. This involves a baleful police sergeant, Folcada (Marcelo Subiotto), who cements his power by performing extrajudicial killings at the behest of the authorities in Buenos Aires.
For reasons having more to do with chance than personal ambition, young Miguelito (Joaquín Bonadeo) is taken under Folcada’s wing. The boys are all mesmerized by Folcada’s young, flirtatious wife Miranda (Lali Espósito), nicknamed “Negra” because of her short, jet-black hair. The music cues when Miranda appears on screen, and the way she is visualized entirely through the gaze of others, all telegraph Naishtat’s intentions. She is a femme fatale, and she has been the ruin of many a poor boy. And indeed, Miguelito is her newest conquest.
Glaxo would be a much more honest-seeming film had Naishtat made it in black-and-white. It is interesting that the film takes place not exactly during the Peronista years or the Dirty War, but just in between. Situated in the penumbra of authoritarianism, Glaxo looks both forward and back, but without staking out clear historical stakes. The film seems to suggest that a dictatorship is always just in the offing, that people are reliably callow and self-serving, and that only those who commit unspeakable offenses against their fellow citizens can hope to move through the world with any degree of freedom. The all-pervasive cynicism of film noir is certainly a choice. But by postulating that human nature never changes, Glaxo shrugs off any historical perspective from which we might learn something. Betrayal is the coin of the realm, and the realm takes slightly different forms but essentially endures.
Published as part of TIFF 2026 — Dispatch 1.
Comments are closed.