Saw Rudo Y Cursi. It was a super melodramatic soccer film. Imagine: two brothers. On opposite sides of the pitch!! It's comic at moments and mostly tragic. Two brothers from a poor village are drafted by a sleazy talent scout. They're kept in a one-room apartment with four other guys, fed on the finest ramen (shrimp flavor, not bad) make it big and immediately fritter their money away on a gold-digging model and cocaine-fueled gambling. I didn't get the impression that they were to blame for their money-wasting, rather that they were merely naive and being exploited by professional fleecers. Anyway, all of this comes to a head when they must throw a match to solve both of their problems. Something dramatic happens and everyone is not exactly happy, but alive and well.
A curiously sad movie, it has the pace and histrionics of a decent comedy but the cramped panic of a tragedy. Also, in the background there is a drug lord's son marrying their sister. The drug lord acts as a kind of surrogate benefactor to their family, fulfilling all of their wild promises (a house for everyone, cars, etc) which I think is a confusing way of acknowledging that in this wicked world, drug lords often do come out on top, above so-called meritocracies like sport. Tellingly, the greatest moment of tragedy in the film is when the brothers cost their handlers huge amounts of money. The brothers are clearly pawns and suffer the confused panic of people being controlled by a machine they do not understand. As I say though, the film is so manic and over-the-top it should come off as comic and does in parts, but overall the tone is too messy and uneven to register as anything in specific (besides a dower all that glitters is not gold kind of morality play.) This film has the stink of a meddlesome producer fitting a script into an uncomfortable mold.
Also, I once again had to fight my subtitles. Whoever had translated it had done so in text-speak (u for you, r for are, etc) and had just left some stuff untranslated (a tense poker-game, for example.) Perhaps with better subs it would have been a better film. Oh well.
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