FUNNY, DIRTY LITTLE WAR (NO HABRA MAS PENAS NI OLVIDO)

Argentina, 1983, 80 minutes, Colour.
Directed by Hector Olivera.

Funny, Dirty Little War is an excellent and very interesting Argentinian film. It was made just before the election of President Alfonsin and the end of military rule which the film attacks.

The film takes its title rather literally - there is a great deal of fun and satire in the setting up of petty Argentinian administration in a small town. However, this turns literally deadly serious when there are clashes leading to a mini-war, a microcosm. of what was happening in Argentina. It is a tragicomedy illustrating the mood of Argentina in the '70s and '80s.

1. All interesting and enjoyable Argentinian feature film? Its observation of the 70s and 80s? Wit, insight?

2. The title and its ironies? Argentinians and military rule, dictatorship? 20th century history of politics and administration? Local administration, traditions and corruption? The quality of life in the small Argentinian towns? Funny, deadly serious, violent? Hot-blooded Argentinians and their reaction to corruption, to thwarting of power?

3. Production values: location photography, authentic atmosphere, pace and editing?

4. The picture of the ordinary small town? The speaker and sale? Politics? A settled atmosphere? Fuentes and his administration, admirable? The quality of the man? His reliance on Yates? Prosperity? The police and their loyalties? The beginning of stirring? Announcements, strikes, tension, bosses, threats, resistance leading up to the siege, manipulation, a funny and a dirty little war in the town? The implications for ordinary people? Violence, torture, deaths? The military coming to save'?

5. The portrait of Fuentes as a good man, coping? The beginning of the siege and the support and the hostility: the Corporal, the drunkard, the old man? The various tricks? Strategies? Day and night? Values he stood for, taken, tortured, death? A man prepared to take a stand? A man of integrity?

6. The contrast with the officials, wealth, the administrative assistants? Plans, strikes, torture? And not being able to watch? The failing out between the small administration and the larger? Deaths?

7. Police, the Corporal, help. taken, released, surviving? Memories of Peron?

8. The drunkard and his help, strategy, flight?

9. The role of the pilot, the dusting, his bleak final comment, death?

10. The old man and his death, Mateo and the torture, confession?

11. The police and their cruelty? Taken by the youth, deaths? Torture, the toilet? The head of the police?

12. The youth and their stances? The importance of the bystanders, the fruiterer, the two Catholic ladies?

13. The store manager and his sale - the humour coexisting with the bleakness?

14. The blend of the ingredients of black humour and ironies, farce but with insight and truth?