Films about writers

Watched a good one from Argentina last night: El Ciudadano Ilustre (The Distinguished Citizen) (2016) co-directed by Gastón Duprat and Mariano Cohn.

Nobel Prize for Literature winner Daniel Mantovani, played by Oscar Martínez, is burnt out. He has nothing left to write about. He had fled to Europe from his rural hometown in Argentina, Salas, and had not returned in 40 years. But all his increasingly successful novels are based on incidents and characters from his early memories of Salas.

We first meet him in his luxurious home in Barcelona, instructing his PA to refuse various offers of TV interviews, lectures and honors. He at first refuses, then on a whim accepts, an invitation to revisit Salas for a few days and accept the town's greatest honor.

We see his courtesy and cosmopolitan values increasingly tested by the gaucho redneck inhabitants. What starts off socially awkward becomes humiliating and menacing, as he makes a number of wrong moves. But his ordeal re-ignites his creativity and resolves his love-hate relationship with his birthplace. Perhaps he will now at last be able to write about other places and subjects?

This is a very good movie and I have only the most minor criticisms:

--- Some relief from the reactionary philistinism of the locals is afforded by the young hotel clerk who gives some of his short stories to Mantovani to read. The great man approves and offers to get the best one published. It did seem improbable to me to stumble on a worthwhile fellow-writer among the few people he was prepared to talk to at any length during his short stay.

--- A plumply attractive teenager throws herself at him. Even in such a small and backward town, it seemed improbable that the local beauty would have a fiance like Mongo from Blazing Saddles.

--- As the film moves to its dramatic and violent conclusion, the score becomes stereotypically menacing, out of sync with the coolly ironic tone hitherto.

I liked the dialog. The subtitles were good but one never knows how much one misses. For once, in the brief snippets of his works presented, one could actually believe he was a top writer. 

The style reminded me of Alexander Payne's fine movies like Nebraska and About Schmidt, where older men move out of their comfort zone and their lives receive a belated shake-up, but the writing is sharper and darkly philosophical here. It is has some perceptive things to say about the nature of inspiration and the writer's place in society.