Imagining Argentina

Imagining Argentina could only be imagined by a perversely ignorant mind. Since its director/screenwriter is Christopher Hampton, who before and after has adapted the screenplays of Dangerous Liaisons, Mary Reilly, The Quiet American, and The Father, I can only blame Lawrence Thornton, whose novel inspired (though perhaps a better word would be instigated) this vile piece of crap.

The film takes place in 1977, in an Argentina where everyone speaks English with a wide range of Hispanic and Latin American accents, none of which sound remotely Argentinian. The exception is Emma Thompson, who uses her natural British accent even though her character's name is Cecilia Rueda.

She is a dissident journalist in Buenos Aires; after publishing an article denouncing the forced disappearance of students protesting bus fares, Cecilia is kidnapped by the secret police. Faced with the indifference, and almost certain complicity, of the authorities, her husband Carlos (Antonio Banderas) puts up posters with Cecilia's photo, but I doubt that these are of any use, considering that the information on them is printed in Spanish and here everyone, as I just noted, speaks English.

This linguistic dissonance, however, is not the most outrageous aspect the movie. Oh no; that dubious honor is reserved for the fact, and I swear I'm not making this up, that Carlos happens to be psychic. Really.

Carlos is producing a play for a youth theater troupe, and one fine day, completely out of the blue, he tells one of the actors that his father, who was also kidnapped, will be released later that night. “It was as if I was remembering the future,” he explains to his friend and colleague Silvio (Rubén Blades, who that same year appeared in Once Upon a Time in Mexico; who would have imagined that the latter would be the more realistic of the two).

The whole thing is like a cross between Tell Me How I Die and the Saturday Night Live episode where Chris Walken is a "trivial psychic," exce...