Riding the cusp of the explosion of New Wave Argentinian cinema that emerged at the end of the 90s (and still continues), this sultry black and white drama outstrips the no-budget realities of its production history with a dazzling display of style and verve.
Like its contemporary Argentinian features "Nine Queens" and "Son of the Bride", "Bolivia" is set in the grubby realities of the urban environment, where illegal Bolivian immigrant Freddie (Freddy Waldo Flores) takes a job as a short order cook in a Buenos Aires bar frequented by the city's taxi drivers.
Treated without much respect by the constantly bickering male customers, Freddie finds himself trapped in a world where life is cheap, everyone's in debt, and drugs are everywhere.
Full of restless energy, director Israel Adrián Caetano's film is reminiscent of Scorsese's "Taxi Driver", not least of all the scene in which De Niro hangs out in a New York coffee shop with his fellow cabbies. Taking Scorsese's grasp of cinematic language as his starting point, Caetano delivers a nervy drama full of tense close-ups, foreboding camera angles, and grainy cinéma-vérité photography.
The effect is rather like letting one of the film's burned out, coke-snorting taxi drivers get behind the camera - effusive, confident yet threatening to slip into psychotic delirium at any moment.
Picking apart at the social fabric that holds the bar together, "Bolivia" draws out the country's economic collapse. After being burned off the Bolivian fields by America's indiscriminate war on drugs, Freddie's come in search of a better life. But what he discovers instead is racism and extortion in a sweaty, sultry city that seems to be feeding off itself.
Self-assuredly modest in its technique, this is a supreme example of why Argentina's low-budget cinema is currently some of the most exciting in the world.
In Spanish with English subtitles.
Bolivia (2003)
