Tetro is the latest film by acclaimed writer/director Francis Ford Coppola. Starring Vincent Gallo as Tetro, Maribel Verdú as Marina, Carmen Maura as Alone, Leticia Brédice as Josefina and Alden Ehrenreich as Bennie.
Bennie goes from New York to Buenos Aires to visit his long-lost brother Tetro, who is living a very pathetic life as a failed playwright. Tetro's girlfriend, Marina, helps Bennie as she gives him Tetro's unfinished play. Bennie decides to finish it and discovers the real reason why Tetro left. Bennie prepares the play and it gets into the hands of literary critic, Alone. She invites them to participate in the important Patagonia Festival. While there receiving the prize, their famous orchestra conductor father dies.
The film has the typical themes of Hollywood films like family relationships, opposed siblings, love or tragedy. But Coppola's film is very minimal aesthetically, shot in black and white but with color flashbacks. Inside this simple history, Coppola combines weird theater plays, cinema references, argentinean tango, female nudity and absurd dialogues. Gallo's and Ehrenreich's performances help the film throughout the end, because it clocks past the two hours.
Is not a masterpiece but seems like a personal and low-budget film that the director would do thirty years ago, prior to his hit saga (The Godfather). Although it is predictable at times and too lengthy, it is fun to see mid-level and unknown actors do an unconventional film penned by an established Hollywood director.
