Un Amor De Borges (2000)

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Dedicated to his father, director Leopoldo Torre Nilsson (THE SEVEN MADMEN), Javier Torre's UN AMOR DE BORGES is a poignant look at a troubled, struggling writer and his life-affirming muse. Based on a true story, the film follows the 46-year-old Jorge Luis Borges, a childlike man firmly under… More Dedicated to his father, director Leopoldo Torre Nilsson (THE SEVEN MADMEN), Javier Torre's UN AMOR DE BORGES is a poignant look at a troubled, struggling writer and his life-affirming muse. Based on a true story, the film follows the 46-year-old Jorge Luis Borges, a childlike man firmly under his mother's control, as he falls in love with 26-year-old Estela Canto, a communist writer translating an Agatha Christie mystery into Spanish. Borges dreams of being a successful writer, coming alive only when he talks to Estela about Yeats, Shakespeare, Shaw--and his own slowly maturing work. As Estela helps expand Borges's limited world, his mother insists he end the relationship immediately--especially when Borges dedicates his next story, the soon-to-be-famous "The Aleph," to Estela. Jean Pierre Noher is extraordinary as Borges, walking and talking as if on eggshells, hesitant in his every movement, his eyes filled with an evocative loneliness even as the gift of sight is slowly taken away from him. Noher, who resembles a cross between Chazz Palminteri and Nathan Lane, won Best Actor awards at the Biarritz and Santo Domingo Film Festivals for his marvelous work. Inés Sastre is outstanding as Estela, a defiant, fiercely independent woman who wants more out of life than Borges is able to give. And Inda Ledesma is perfectly villainous as a mother who is unwilling to let her grown son do anything on his own--while also playing a crucial role in the development of his magnificent talent.This film screened in New York City in May 2001 as part of the Recent Argentine Cinema film festival (Passionate Stories--a Passion for Storytelling) organized by the Film Society of Lincoln Center.