AT TRIBECA: ALL IN

An entrant in the World Narrative Competition at this year's Tribeca Film Festival, All In (original title: La Suerte En Tus Manos, literally, “the luck in your hands”) is a romantic comedy from Argentinian director Daniel Burman. It's not a bad one either, even if it's a little wonky structurally and features my least favorite trope in the history of cinema—the rom-com character who lies to impress his/her romantic partner. Those two irritants aside, the picture's quite charming and engenders the generosity to overlook the problematic aspects.

The male lead, Uriel (Oscar-winning songwriter Jorge Drexler, in his acting debut, which is amazing because he's fucking great in this) is in a fairly decent place in his life: he's making tons of cash playing poker and doing some kind of shady though technically legal business (I couldn't quite make out what it was with the rapid Spanish and occasionally unreliable subtitles; the vague shadiness did kind of seem on purpose, though). He's got a couple adorable kids. And since his wife left him he's been getting laid so often he's considering getting a vasectomy.

The female lead, Gloria (Valeria Bertuccelli), is back in Argentina after having been abroad, and is dating some wanky, pretentious dude with a goatee, who keeps being wanky and pretentious when she's trying to mourn her just-deceased father. Gloria's mom (long divorced from pops) is awesome: she has a radio show where she holds forth in just about the tweediest way imaginable about literature—for real, NPR looks like fuckin Opie and Anthony compared to Gloria's mom—though off the air she's fairly normal for someone prone to making literary references every five minutes.

Being the kind of movie this is, Uriel and Gloria are bound to get together at some point. The fact that they used to “date” (or fuck constantly in motels) adds a nice wrinkle, as it means their meet-cute is actually kind of plausible. Symbolically it's pretty funny too, because Uriel sees her and goes to make his move at the exact moment Gloria's telling the wanky pretentious goatee dude to hit the bricks.

So they start to date, and some intermittent hilarity ensues. Everything was going fine until Uriel, for no apparent reason whatsoever other than to inject some artificial drama into the whole thing, lies to Gloria about what he does for a living. There's no reason whatsoever for him to do so, and it's really fucking annoying for about twenty-five minutes until, in a nice twist, fate starts ironically lending some truth to the lie, part of what makes the ending so satisfying.

Part of what makes All In fun is in trying to figure out whether, since the movie is kind of torn about whether it's being a serious meditation on relationships and romance between adults and being an industry-standard Hollywood rom-com, it'll end the way the latter always does, or whether it'll throw a foreign art-film curveball. So, I won't spoil that surprise. It should be noted that the story does have time for the following:

--Facebook stalking
--critiquing the gender binary
--Kabba'listic extrapolations of the concepts of luck, lying, and fate
--high-stakes poker
--an all-rabbi metal band
--a more laid-back, less internecine cocaine civil war Argentine version of Fleetwood Mac

I mean, come on. That's a movie with its heart in the right place. Only problem is, its head is a little out to lunch at times. There are a few too many scenes where people tell each other things that we've just seen happen (frequently two scenes in a row with the same exposition), which is part of what makes the movie, which runs an hour and fifty-three minutes, feel about three hours long. The pace is really, really slow, especially in the first act; it picks up a bit after Uriel and Gloria meet but it's still entirely too much of a slog. It's a few judicious edits away from being fixed, though, so if when this gets acquired for U.S. distribution and you hear it's now an hour thirty-five, disregard this stuff about the pacing and overlength.

Even now it's not that much of a problem. Jorge Drexler and Valeria Bertucelli are terrific together, a couple one genuinely wants to see work it out. And, as mentioned above, there's just enough legitimately apeshit atmosphere that even as you're checking the time and going “Jesus Christ, there's still an hour left?” you're still like, “I wish this wasn't this slow, because fuck if I haven't kind of fallen for this movie.” That is, presuming you talk like that.

So, yeah. Pretty fun little movie, all things considered. Keep an eye out to see if this gets picked up, or check it out at the Tribeca Film Festival, if you can.