by Julio Nakamurakare
Herald staff

As one of the four elements of Nature, water, like life itself, is everpresent, to the point of playing the lead in many narrative formats. Last year we had the little-seen gem of a film Lluvia, directed by Paula Hernández (Herencia) and starring actress Valeria Bertucelli, whose sole presence lights up the screen.
Also last year, there was the much-awaited second cinematic foray by Lucrecia Martel, La mujer sin cabeza, much touted but panned by critics and largely ignored by the public. In La mujer sin cabeza, as in its predecessor La ciénaga, rainwater, tap water, a shower and shampoo could not cleanse the indolent bourgeois rot of the hypocrytical upper crust.
In Giralt’s comedy Toda la gente sola, set in the idyllic small town of Venado Tuerto, Santa Fe province, it’s the lack of water, of rain, that’s driving everybody crazy. In fact, Toda la gente sola may have been titled One Hundred Days Without Water. ‘Tis the dry season, and the summer heat, the small town chit-chat and the petty affairs set the cauldron afire.
In this sense, Venado Tuerto is no Peyton Place, as no such malice is to be found in this provincial town. It’s only that people are lonely, though not the kind of loneliness you see in alienated urban societies. Rather, this type of solitude is not existential, it’s not a sex-less life where you need to avoid social scandal at any cost. In Venado Tuerto — which, in this case, may have well been called Spitting Portoise or anything like that — life is indolent... on the surface.
Behind the sick and tired weariness of small-town life, especially in the summer when the temperature soars and townsfolk suffocate, it all goes beyond physical exhaustion. It’s the feeling of getting nowhere if you can’t find true love, and the sense that life will make no sense, not at all, not until you find your better half.
There are few characters in Toda la gente sola. What keeps the action moving forward is that, alone as they are, they manage to bump into one another with unsurprising ease. There is a point, even a specific place, where all these lives converge — the town’s Hotel Lys, run by Ana (a fantastic Mónica Villa) and her goofy, overweight, sexually confused teenaged son. There’s her daughter Lola (Lola Berthet), who works at the laundromat, another meeting point, a confessional reclinatory of sorts where everyone tries to wash out the dirt, the stains of daily existence.
The Catholic Church is not thriving, precisely, in spite of having a priest out of Vogue (Esteban Meloni), five-o’clock shadow included, the scent of eau de cologne and masculinity emanating through every pore of his body.
And there’s the itinerant Evangelist Church run by Padre Peloso (Alejandro Urdapilleta, who pulls this one off with predictable ease), who comes into town to perform the miracle of transforming people’s lives while digging into their pockets.
In Toda la gente sola everyone is either alone or in a completely unfulfilling married life.
The background to this story is a curious cross of narrative genres: comedy in the foreground, an intimation of a western showdown, a farce, a movie tailored to the romantic fantasies of people, regardless of sex, sexual orientation, marital status or, like the young and handsome Padre Roberto, a quietly happy, serene man whose greatest love is God but who nevertheless — understandably so — gives in, with natural placidity, to the carnal, spiritually uplifting carnal desire.
But in spite of this scenario in which conformity seems to rule, Toda la gente sola is bent on telling us that we all have something in common: we’re all alone, but not hopelessly so.
Actresses Mónica Villa (Ana, the divorced hotel owner), and her daughter Lola (Lola Berthet) carry the weight of this story on their shoulders. Indeed, unaware this is their role in the townsfolk’s lives, they, each in her own way, strive to find happiness (a boyfriend, a husband, a man) but do something about it.
Life can be suffocating in Venado Tuerto, for not only has the town been hit by the drought: it’s also running short of tap water, courtesy of a corrupted politician.
There are several catalysts for the sleepy town’s sudden wakeup call: Ana being forced by her ex husband to sell the house and split the intake in two, the Evangelist priest arriving in town — with barely legal boyfriend — to chase the devils away, a jealous laundry employee speaking a few words on the phone to unleash a hurricane of unforeseeable proportions on everyone’s lives.
Water’s coming, they all say with a mix of incredulity and hope, and love will come their way too in the most unexpected manner.
Toda la gente sola is a predictable comedy in every regard, but no less dignified for strictly following the dictums of the genre. When the townsfolk feel rain on their fingertips they become aware there’s room for redemption, that life always gives you a second chance.