Wuchak Released in 2009 and directed by Francis Ford Coppola, "Tetro" is drama about two American brothers in Buenos Aires, Argintina. The younger one, Bennie (Alden Ehrenreich), idolizes the older, Tetro (Vincent Gallo), and hasn't seen him in a dozen years because he mysteriously cut all ties with the family and moved to Argentina, where he lives with his girlfriend, Miranda (Maribel Verdú). Bennie discovers his brother's near-finished play and is obsessed with completing it without his permission, perhaps because he senses it holds the answers he seeks. Klaus Maria Brandauer plays the arrogant conductor father while cutie Sofía Gala is on hand as a young Argentinan girl that fancies Bennie. The movie is primarily in B&W, but with color flashbacks."Tetro" is an artful and somewhat hypnotic adult-oriented drama by the master filmmaker, the very opposite of conventional Hollywood blockbusters. Ehrenreich is reminiscent of Leonardo DiCaprio when he was young while Gallo is broodingly charismatic as the eponymous protagonist. Coppola has always had a good eye for female cast and "Tetro" delivers the goods with Verdú and Gala, although I wish the latter had more screen time. There's a revelation at the end that I failed to anticipate, but should have because everything in the story points to it.Francis said at the Cannes film festival that "nothing in (the movie) happened, but it's all true." In other words, the film's autobiographical in some ways. The challenge is to perceive the parallels. Two are obvious seeing as how Coppola's father was a famous conductor. The other is when South America's most honored critic asks Tetro if her opinion matters to him anymore and he honestly says it doesn't; sticking her nose in the air, she silently walks away. Like Tetro, Coppola no longer cares what critics think of his works. It's akin to Kurtz' disposition toward the pathetic brass in "Apocalypse Now." The critic's name in the film is fittingly "Alone," played by Carmen Maura. Then there's the fact that Francis has a brother he's been known to have a love/hate relationship with, not to mention how his nephew, Nicolas Cage, is a little reminiscent of the titular character. But none of this speculation really matters; all that matter is that "Tetro" is a creative, operatic, entertaining drama. But stay away if you need constant 'exciting' things going on, like explosions, absurd action scenes and the corresponding CGI (not that there's anything wrong with that, lol).The film runs 127 minutes and was shot in Buenos Aires & the Andes, Argentina with studio work done in Spain.GRADE: B

jotix100 Francis Ford Coppola latest film "Tetro" marked an awaited comeback for this celebrated American director. In a film that has shades of biographic connections, Mr. Coppola is to be praised for shooting an ambitious film in black and white, something of a departure for him. The images he produces in that velvety medium, which cinematographer Mihai Malaimare Jr. created for the film, are reminders of a bygone era of movie making. The music is provided by Argentine composer Osvaldo Golijov which mixes classical themes with tango. That said, there are inconsistencies in the story. It is clear why Angelo, now self named Tetro, has decided to go back to the roots of his father in Buenos Aires. The stormy relationship between father and son was a complicated affair for starters. There is a lot of resentment between Carlo Tetrocini, the noted conductor and his son, the would be writer, Angelo. A young Benjamin, arrives looking for his long lost brother who has no desire to get reacquainted with the young man. It is clear that the young man's presence weighs heavily on Tetro, who resents the intrusion.Tetro begins opening little by little to Bennie, thanks to Miranda, his live-in lover, who realizes the pain inside the man she loves. Tetro's writings are found by his brother a series of unconnected ramblings written in a strange language and code. Trying to make sense of what his brother wanted to say consumes the young man, who has been befriended by a group of bohemian 'portenos' working on a theater performance that makes no sense. Add to all that an accident that lands Bennie in a hospital. Tetro going to visit his brother brings him Spanish novels by Roberto Bolano, one of the most obscure and difficult writers in recent memory when young Benjamin does not even speak the language! Then, there is a matter of flashbacks in which clips from films "The Red Shoes" and "The Tales of Hoffmann", both directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, which Bennie remembers being taken by Angelo.The film had all the elements for being a good movie, even a great one, but Mr. Coppola decided to throw in a pretentious milieu that includes an interplay with an 'avant-garde' theater group, a trip to the Patagonia in the South of Argentina, as well as a mysterious and flaky film critic named Alone! Now, if that stretching the story too much, we do not know what else Mr. Coppola would have decided to incorporate to the drama he wanted to present. The film uses part of the text by Mauricio Kartun, "Fausta" a theatrical work that does not add anything to the narrative, but which plays in the background as a sort of pretentious performance that does not serve, much less add to the story. Perhaps another actor rather than Vincent Gallo would have done justice to Tetro. That said, he goes through the film like in a fog. He shows no chemistry with Maribel Verdu, his lady love, who is seen as Miranda. The real surprise was Alden Ehrenreich's Bennie, who seems to be a charismatic actor with a bright future ahead of him. Klaus Maria Brandauer playing a dual role has limited time on screen, mainly in flashbacks. The Argentine supporting cast does what it can, but unfortunately their characters are not appealing to the viewer. The great Carmen Maura is totally wasted in a role that is more a caricature than a character.

gregking4 TETRO is the first original film from Francis Ford Coppola in quite some time, and it is also his most personal film in a long while. Tetro is a melodramatic tale about family secrets, and the complicated relationship between a father and his wayward son, and between brothers, and is reminiscent of the films of Douglas Sirk, et al. It has been shot in luminous black and white by cinematographer Mihai Malaimare Jr (Youth Without Youth, etc), which enhances the mood, although flashbacks and a couple of fantasy sequences have been filmed in color. Osvald Golijov's music score also enhances the drama, and gives it an almost operatic quality. Vincent Gallo plays Tetro, the gifted son of a famous maestro (Klaus Maria Brandauer), who has turned his back on his family and is living in Buenos Aires. A once talented writer he has not produced any thing for a while. Then Tetro's 18-year old brother Benjamin (played by newcomer Alden Ehrenreich) arrives, when the cruise ship on which he works breaks down and undergoes repairs. Benjamin stays with Tetro and his wife in their small apartment, although the relationship between them is strained and tense. But Benjamin's curiosity about an unfinished play leads to an understanding about their painful past and eventually brings about reconciliation. Tetro may not be Coppola's best film, but it is certainly amongst his most interesting and emotionally powerful work for some years.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU This film cannot in any way be summarized without destroying all possible pleasure in the spectator or viewer. It is a film that is full of various keys and enigmas, each one about what follows or what precedes, anaphora and cataphora melting into catatonia. Let's say that Coppola deals here with the eternal theme of the relation between the father and the son but he multiplies the relation like with a mirror and ends up with the impossibility to know who the father is and who the son is, who the fathers are and who their sons are. He then multiplies the rivalries and desires of all type, sexual, emotional, professional or whatever among and around these men. We don't know who made who and who is made by whom, and when these binary relations turn ternary, the trios are absolutely undecipherable. The father makes the son and the son makes the father, for sure, but in what order and in what direction. This brings us to a far more interesting aspect of the film. The creative act itself, the act of procreation sublimated into a work of literature or drama, into writing, front side back and back side front and maybe some other possibilities too. Then this act is at once surrounded by the ambition, the jealousy and the greed of all those who could in a way or another put their grubby hands onto the work of art and especially the royalties that could be generated by success. And we come to the idea that it takes far more than one father to produce a work of art and the work of art is the son of far more than one father. And anyway this work of art is nothing but a lie and a confused disguise for the real reality that the main concerned people do not want to let out. Better keep a ghost in your cupboard than face the people who produced that ghost with their selfish insignificance. If you like strongly emotional films that do not fall into sentimentalese verbiage and if you do not like too much gore in your tragic films, that's the film you must not miss. So go out and watch it anywhere you can.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID