a white man mid-speech sits across the table from a white woman about to take a sip of her drinkalr

Silvia Prieto

Screening on Film
Directed by Martín Rejtman.
With Rosario Bléfari, Valeria Bertuccelli, Vicentico.
Argentina, 1999, 35mm, color, 92 min.
Spanish with English subtitles.
Print source: HFA

Rejtman’s effervescent masterpiece is a glittering screwball-inspired comedy of shifting identities that centers around the ardent efforts of its strong eponymous heroine to suddenly lead her life in a radically new direction. Everything goes differently when she discovers there is more than one Silvia Prieto. Buoyed by its fanciful, rapid-fire dialogue and at times hilariously absurd story, Silvia Prieto is saturated by a Pop sensibility that belies a gently ironic fascination with bright logos, television slogans and the rich contradictions of consumer culture. Rejtman’s deep appreciation of nonprofessional actors led him to prominent, popular Argentine singer-musicians in key roles, including Vicentico and Rosario Bléfari, who brings a spontaneous grace to her portrayal of Silvia Prieto as a young woman spinning at a crossroads of her own design. Guided by Bléfari’s mellifluous voice in a wonderfully disjointed voiceover, Silvia Prieto offers an affectionate portrait of romantic folly that, at its end, reveals an unexpected bridge to Rejtman’s lesser-known documentary work. 

The Harvard Film Archive will screen a beautiful English-subtitled 35mm print that now forms part of the HFA’s Cinema Tropical Collection.

Part of film series

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The Practice (and Other Works) By Martín Rejtman

Other film series with this film

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The Comic Art of Martin Rejtman, or Love in the Time of Late Capitalism