Victor (Celso Franco) is on the run in Paraguayan thriller 7 BOXES
7 BOXES (7 CAJAS) (Juan Carlos Maneglia & Tana Schémboria, 2012)
Cinema Village
22 East 12th St. between University Pl. & Fifth Ave.
Opens Friday, February 7
212-924-3363
www.cinemavillage.com
www.7cajas.com
After screening at more than seventy-five international film festivals over the past two years, Juan Carlos Maneglia and Tana Schémbori’s Paraguayan thriller, 7 Boxes, is getting its official U.S. theatrical release February 7, opening at Cinema Village. The low-budget film, which was made for about half a million dollars and broke box-office records in its native country, is set in and around Municipal Market No. 4 in Paraguay’s capital city, Asunción, where seventeen-year-old Victor (Celso Sebastián Franco Ferreira) pushes a rickety wheelbarrow, helping people with their purchases, sometimes accompanied by his friend Liz (Lali González). Always on the lookout to make a quick buck in order to afford a cell phone and a television, Victor gets a call from Gus (Roberto Cardozo), asking him to make an important delivery because Gus’s usual accomplice, Nelson (Víctor Sosa Traverzi), cannot be reached and it’s an emergency. So Victor jumps at the opportunity, not caring what’s in the boxes even though he knows something shady’s going on, instead simply taking half of a hundred-dollar bill, the second half of which will be given to him upon completion of his task. But it’s not going to be very easy, because when Nelson finds out about it, he is determined to do whatever it takes to steal the deal for himself. Meanwhile, Victor’s sister, Tamara (Nelly Dávalos), is concerned not only about the trouble her younger brother might be in but also about her pregnant coworker, Leti (Katia García), who is getting no help from the father, Gus, who is more worried about what his bosses, the comic-relief duo of Don Dario (Paletita) and Luis (Nico García), are going to do to him when they learn how nothing has gone quite as planned. Maneglia and Schémbori’s debut feature, following a long career in shorts and television, has its moments, but there are far too many head-scratching plot holes, red herrings, inconsistencies, and hard-to-believe twists that detract from the film’s energy, which works best when it focuses on Victor and his desire to better his station, through technology. While Victor is a sympathetic character, played with a wide-eyed innocence by Franco, his nemesis, Nelson, is a lost cause from the start, desperate to make money to buy medicine for his sick child but never really having a moral center. Still, it’s an admirable achievement coming from a country that has produced so few full-length films. Maneglia and Schémbori will be at Cinema Village for Q&As after the 7:10 screenings on February 7 & 8.