Balnearios

Mariano Linás

IndieLisboa 2005 •

Argentina, Documentary, 2002, 80′

An exotic documentary about seaside resorts and the foolish rituals practised by the tourists. Divided into four episodes, it is a curious and amusing insight about the summer vacation of the Argentinean. Four accounts that describe seaside resorts as majestic monuments of a lost civilization. These seaside resorts set up unconscious bodies swinging between two poles, full and empty, turning it into a succession of two kinds of images: one that irradiates the movements of its organs, another that reveals its skeleton. The two possible temporalities disable any capture of simultaneous wholes. From the crowd to solitude, seashore cities are placed on an oscillatory movement that varies between the urban and the popular spirit. As supreme leisure centres, seaside resorts allow this hilarious, ironic and satirical account.