Tetro

Many reviewers have seen Tetro as a semi-autobiographical study of an artistic family by Francis Cord Coppola. His father was a composer, his mother an actress, and the two brothers in Tetro have a symphony orchestra conductor as their father. Like their writer-producer-director, the movie brothers are transplanted from the Mediterranean to America. So what, a moviegoer shrugs: is the movie worth seeing for itself rather than its cultural references?

It's a pretentious self-conscious work of B&W cinematic artistry, but they don't make many of them any more, and not like they used to, like this. Cobble-stoned Buenos Aires looks and feels a perfect setting for such a melodramatically old-fashioned tale of fraternal love and filial hatred. We are in a setting where Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams, Elia Kazan, Rossellini, Fellini and other icons lurk behind mirrors and shadows. There's even a manic upstairs neighbour and a drag artist who've wandered in from an Almodovar plot, and a cameo role for that director's often-used comic muse, Carmen Maura.

Newcomer Alden Ehrenreich is Bennie, a teenage American cruise ship busboy, travelling into the grimy heart of the city to track down his older brother, Tetro (Vincent Gallo), for the first time in a long time. Gallo is a bitter would-be writer with a middle-ageing Argentine lover (Spanish actress Maribel Verdu). Gallo frowns and growls in immaculately-lit close-ups, while Ehrenreich smiles prettily as if amused at being asked to channel a young DiCaprio.

In the first of many square-screen sudden colour flashbacks, Gallo's mother is shown to be an opera singer killed in a car crashed by Tetro. We'd already been told that, and what a son-of-bitch the boys' father was. Bennie had a different, later mother who's been in a coma for nine years, we're also told early on. There's a sweet uncle too, and it's hard to credit that any Spanish-blooded family would really be this Italianate.

When dialogue for such melodramatic devices is conducted in Spanish, the scenario's moody neuroses are almost credible. Not so comfortably in the English-language passages though, especially when Gallo is uttering Methodic punctuations or Verdu is obliged to get the plot moving with clearly enunciated explanations. Meanwhile, any doubts as to the emotions a moviegoer should be having are clarified by the musical soundtrack. It tinkles, tangos, sings arias and chatters in accordion tones whenever necessary.

Although the movie can be made to sound risible, it's actually a delight to watch, a cinematic time-warp experience. It worked better for me with the volume turned off and Spanish subtitles switched on. Maybe the movie would have been more effective as an homage to silent films.