Ariel Menaker (Daniel Hendler) lives in a small Jewish community in Buenos Aires in Daniel Burman's film "The Lost Embrace." The film is Argenina's 2004 entry for the Best Foreign Language Film and won the Grand Jury Award at the Berlin Film Festival; Hendler also won the Best Actor Award in Berlin for his winning performance, which enlivens a goodhearted, gentle film.
Handsome and intelligent, the 27-year-old college dropout is a compelling lost soul who observes the slow unfolding of his own life from a distance. Ariel works as a clerk in the family lingerie store with his mother (Adriana Aizemberg) in a mall in a Jewish enclave of Buenos Aires -– though Americans will be surprised at the modesty of this shabby shopping emporium. The stores -- including an electronics emporium run by Italians, a declining stationary shop owned by old Osvaldo, and the Feng Shui retailer who couldn't get a place in the Asian mall -- are cramped, shoddily decorated and poorly lit. There is no airconditioning in this mall, no bustling food court or picturesque waterfalls. The lacy underwear Ariel's mother sells is kept in closed drawers rather than on the lifelike models at Victoria's Secret.
This decrepit mall is Ariel's home; the motley crew of elderly shopkeepers and visiting rabbis has become his extended family. His unambitious older brother works upstairs, importing and exporting goods. His closest friend runs a travel agency. Ariel even conducts his sexual affairs in the dressing room of his mother's store -- with curvaceous Rita, manager of the Internet store across the hall, who mysteriously wears the same lime green sweater in every shot of the film. He avoids the infamous café where his father Elias, who never returned from the Yom Kippur War, once smashed a jar of mayonnaise.
Burman's creation of a Jewish community in "Lost Embrace" is rich and fascinating. The varied characters come off as eccentric without being cloying. Ariel's discontentment with the smallness of his world is almost tangible. The story, however, loses steam with the film's tidy conclusion. A long buried family secret is revealed, and Ariel, once eager to escape, unconvincingly decides to stay.
