Marcelo Piñeyro: the diptych of crisis

Abstract

This article addresses two films by Marcelo Piñeyro, The Method (2005) and The Widows of Thursdays (2009), and analyzes them in relation to the Argentine Crisis of 2001. With an authorial and industrial conception, both films make an explicit critique of neoliberalism. In this diptych, the experience of the crisis is presented through upper-middle-class characters, who throughout the narrative are subjected to unmasking processes that reveal their true position in the system. The plot evolves along the dialectic between reality and appearances, together with the characters' failed attempts to build impossible communities. In dialogue with genres and with heterogeneous hypotexts –A Catalan play and an Argentine novel–, these films belong to the filmography of a director who has been valued more by the public than by criticism.