Familia rodante

Plot

The comedy-drama tells the story of Emilia (Graciana Chironi) an 84-year-old grandmother who lives in the Buenos Aires suburbs and receives a phone call inviting her to be the matron of honour at her niece's wedding in Misiones, the village of her birth.

The Province of Misiones, where the village is located, is over 1000 kilometres away, on the Brazilian border in the farthest north-east part of Argentina.

Nevertheless, the large family decides to embark on a weekend long trip to take their grandmother to the wedding in a beat-up motor-home.

While the members have feuds, intrigues and love affairs on the journey, they, mostly, have to accept each other's quirks and faults, and give each other a lot of space along the way as they encounter a few problems on their long road-trip.

The film ends with Emilia in an introspective moment. She drinks her mate and appears to contemplate her family and life.

Cast

Casting

Pablo Trapero, in neo-realist fashion, used non-actors when he filmed.

The grandmother in the film (Graciana Chironi) is Trapero's actual grandmother. In fact, she's present in all of Trapero's films. She's seen by the director as the story's conscience.

Filming locations

The picture was filmed in Buenos Aires, Yapeyú, Corrientes and La Cruz, Corrientes; Argentina.

Distribution

The film was first presented at the Venice Film Festival on 6 September 2004. Later in the month it made its North American debut at the Toronto International Film Festival on 16 September 2004.

It screened at various film festivals, including: the Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival, Brazil; the New York Film Festival, USA; the Chicago International Film Festival, USA; the Nantes Festival, France; the Seattle International Film Festival, USA; and others.

Release dates of production companies

Critical reception

Stephen Holden, film critic for The New York Times, liked the film and the direction of Pablo Trapero, and wrote, "Don't fret if you find it frustrating to unscramble the blood ties or follow the fragmented domestic dramas that jostle one another in Pablo Trapero's bighearted ensemble comedy...Without becoming intimate with any one person, you come to know them collectively."

Time Out film reviews wrote, "[I]t becomes clear we've seen a film of subtlety and wisdom, a shaggy-dog story about learning to deal with disappointment, compromise, confusion and loss: learning, in short, to survive life in all its painful truth and beauty."

Film critic Diego Lerer, a member of FIPRESCI, wrote an extensive essay on Pablo Trapero's cinema works. He said of the film, "The 'families' in Rolling Family are already morally 'corrupted.' It is never clearly spoken, but one of the reasons is obvious: they live in the capital. They have urbanised, diversified and standardised themselves; they are no longer the safeguard against problems, but are now a part of them, and perhaps among the most serious ones...the characters are presented in a much crueler and hostile way, and the filmmaker does not just look at 'the others' with a dark gaze, but also at 'us'."

Critic Neil Young wrote, "Familia rodante nimbly dramatises the clash between old ways and new, making this a socially-conscious road movie with genuine texture and warmth...[the] [s]tar of the show is Chironi, very much front-and-centre as Emilia – the actress is actually Trapero's own grandmother, and as well as making some subtle points about family, maturity and the state of Argentina, it also works very well as a heartfelt, elaborately autobiographical tribute/farewell to a beloved relative."

Awards

Wins

Nominations