Aristotle and Dante Uncover the Secrets of the Universe Review: A Sweet But Strange One Week Love Story

Aristotle and Dante Uncover the Secrets of the Universe Review: A Sweet But Strange One Week Love Story

Aristotle (Max Pelayo) needs almost completely Aristotle and Dante discover the secrets of the universe to express what you really feel. For most of its 90-plus minutes long, it growls and growls, afraid of being seen and ignored. When it’s finally revealed, it comes as a moment of sweaty catharsis, a cool shower that comes after days of unnerving heat.

This also creates a strange twist. For although Aristotle preferred to hold back, Aristotle and Dante, from the moment it starts, is a film that begs so much to be understood that it can’t seem to stop in its tracks. He tells us when he can show himself, shouts when he can whisper, emphasizes his themes in blunt dialogue, and is quick to explain himself, Aristotle and Dante Too much denying the thrill of opening up about its sweet pleasures.

Aristotle and Dante discover the secrets of the universe

bottom line

A sincere love story that doesn’t go its own way.

Event: Toronto International Film Festival (Discovery)
in papers: Max Pelayo, Reese González, Eugenio Derbez, Eva Longoria, Veronica Falcón, Kevin Alejandro
Screenwriter Director: hi alberto

96 minutes

Based on Benjamin Alire Saenz’s acclaimed bestselling YA, the drama follows two Mexican-American teenagers in late 1980s El Paso. Aristotle is a working-class loner, seething with anger and resentment, who doesn’t understand everything we’ve learned because that’s how he describes himself with a very open voice.

On a sultry summer day, bored, she takes a dip in the community pool only to find newcomer Dante (Reese Gonzalez) staring at her, looking positively angelic in the sunlight. While Ari is heartbreak and insecurity, Dante, the son of a relatively wealthy academic couple (Kevin Alejandro and Eva Longoria), is all sweetness and light: a true pixie maniac dreamer with a cute habit of his own. . Go barefoot whenever possible.

The bond they form is intense and immediate. Perhaps too much, even for a narrative based on instant connection: screenwriter-director Aich Alberto weaves them together so insistently that we can barely get to know them first as individuals, or feel the process by which interest occurs. Love becomes something deep and lasting. In the midst of the storm, its young leaders, both relatively new, struggle to hold their own. Pelayo is a champion creator but is confused about the nuances and depth of the script summary. And González struggles to create a believable Natalie Portman in the first half of the film.GardenIllness– A sizable collection of aggressively engaging rarities.

for justice Aristotle and Dante He has a long way to go. His narrative continues throughout the year and remains with Aristotle as Dante leaves in the late summer of 87 to return in the summer of 88. In between, Dante’s presence is reduced to letters to Aristotle, which we hear in a sound fragment, reporting a painful and sometimes painfully lonely journey towards self-discovery. Meanwhile, Aristotle has a lot on his mind besides his estranged best friend. We watch him get a job, meet a girl, we wonder darkly what happened to his imprisoned brother, which his parents (Eugenio Derbez and Veronica Falcone) refuse to talk about.

The events in their lives seem lackluster, perhaps because Aristotle and Dante He seems more interested in who these people are together than who they might be separately. Subplots like Dante’s ambivalence about his own Mexican identity or Aristotle’s disdain for his (seemingly friendly) classmates are played so clumsily that I can only assume they are relics of the source material that was mutilated in translation.

But Aristotle and Dante He eventually returns to normal with Dante returning to midway. González’s performance grows stronger as more emotional weight is given to the performance, and his chemistry with Pelayo takes on intriguing new layers as a bond begins to develop between them that none (but especially the repressed Aristotle) ​​ever had. .

All your fumbles I found out Aristotle and Dante to inspire more indulgence than irritation. On the one hand, it’s clearly a sight to behold. Cinematographer Akis Constantakopoulos has a knack for capturing the self-assured majesty of Texas’ deserts and boundless skies. The beauty of the landscape more convincingly portrays the satisfaction the couple find in each other than the often awkward dialogue. In one of the film’s most impressive scenes, the friends brazenly dance under a sudden downpour as raindrops sparkle like diamonds on the car’s windshield.

It is a moment of pure, insatiable joy in two lives that yearn for more. Reagan-era Texas serves as a dark backdrop for the characters’ exploration of sexuality, highlighted by mentions of anti-LGBTQ hate crimes and the AIDS crisis in the news, and the boys don’t escape unscathed. But Aristotle and Dante Empathize with their fear, anger and anxiety, as well as a surprising number of supporting characters. “I can’t bear to see the loneliness inside you,” Aristotle hears from someone he never expected to trust, and after voicing his pain aloud, it’s as if he’s freed himself from a burden he didn’t know. He was using.

easily Aristotle and DanteIt seems that her faults, in large part, come from an excess of that same tenderness. This makes his faults easy to forgive, or at least easy to want to forgive: if he jumps too eager to explain himself, it’s in defense of a parent desperate to protect his child from a critical or unforgiving world. But the shield he protects is the same shield he covers. Aristotle and Dante She has flashes of beauty and her story has the potential for so much more. If only he was allowed to make the space really shine.

Source: Hollywood Reporter

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