“MANANA TE CUENTO”–a teen comedy from Peru

“Manana Te Cuento”

A Teen Comedy from Peru

Amos Lassen

I have reviewed a lot of films but this is the first Peruvian film I have seen and therefore my first review of a movie from that country. This makes the task a bit more difficult as I have no basis for comparison.”MananaTe Cuento” is built around a very small plot about what happened one night in the lives of three adolescent boys and their adventures with three prostitutes.

I had no expectations when I sat down to watch the movie but the brief synopsis I read about the film did not look very promising. The excellent acting was a pleasant surprise but the cinematography was very amateurish—in fact the movie looks as if it had filmed with a video camera. Eroticism is there but not a great deal of it.

What seem to be missing in the film are those crucial elements of god film making. There is virtually no art direction and in terms of composition the film is sorely lacking. The good acting needed more than just dry humor. The dialog just did not flow and unfortunately had no depth. The screenplay itself is droll which is not a bad thing but dry humor works only when sustained over a short period. The fact that the plot, which could have been so good, has very little structure and this hurt tremendously.

Even with the criticism I have given, this is not a bad movie and deserves to be seen. It is a good try but the film needs better lighting and the ending is not really a conclusion but an open doorway to hoping for hoping for other Peruvian movies.