"Más allá del olvido" (Beyond Oblivion) is one of the best films made in Argentina and the best Hugo Del Carril directed ("La Quintrala" and "Amorina" --even more than the best known "Las aguas bajan turbias"-- are close to deserve that almost silly "best-of" heading). Based on a novel by Georges Rodenbach, the film tells the story of a man (Del Carril himself) obsessed with the woman --and the love-- he lost. This obsession leads him to an other woman (the haunting Laura Hidalgo) who resembles him his dead wife and pushes him to an obscure framework of deceit and ambition. The first astonishing thing on this movie is that one of the central themes of the plot (a man who tries to make a woman into a dead one) is very similar to that absolute masterpiece called "Vertigo". But "Más allá del olvido" was shooted on 1956... and "Vertigo" on 1958. Yes, it seems to be a case for Borges ("Kafka and his Precursors"). Apart from this, the film deals with love and betray, madness and decieve, Argentina and France (a long, ambiguous cultural relationship that once was an axial debate on different circles of argentinian intelectuals), and a lot of other themes, all of them delivered into a masterful mix of suspense and melodrama, with superb acting and a production style that is now missed in Argentina --in both ways of the term: because argentinian films (and econnomical situation) can't afford that luxury and because every moviemaker from that country dream with the possibility of making a movie with those means. And for those who doesn't care for anything but the plot: sit there, watch the movie, let you be driven by the thriller, by the illness of that passion and the weakness of that will, and enjoy the mood, like you do with those old black and white films that you let yourself discover --and love it.
