Can we just preface this with the fact that we LOVED the film festival and all of its staff this year, and we were a little sad when Sean, one of the film society’s programmers introduced A Week Alone – the last movie to play at this year’s festival. Even though it was a bit of a snoozer and definitely not our favorite of the fest this year, we stuck it out. We’d estimate that about one-third of the audience did not share our endurance. It was actually comical watching the psychology of it all. A few folks would get up to leave, and then a few more would follow. . . only to be repeated a few minutes later.
The film, set in a gated community in Buenos Aires, may as well have been set in a gated community in Scottsdale, Arizona, for all we got to see of Argentina. It’s the story of a bunch of rich, spoiled brats left to their own devices for a week while their parents are off vacationing. Very little happens during the week, expect for one non-humorous house-trashing incident, and we were left watching the rather mundane, routine happenings of a group of kids who were not sympathetic, and for the most part, not even the slightest bit entertaining. In what we guess was an attempt to highlight class differences, the film repeatedly shows the kids mistreating their nanny and her child brother, who came to visit his sister and join the kids for the week. We left the film thinking the kids would make some prime candidates for Outward Bound. Although we didn’t feel the same way about the festival itself, we were very relieved when the credits rolled for this one.
