Viola

The world the film describes is so vividly realized that it seems to spill over the edges of the frame, as if the lives of its characters will continue after the credits roll.

Moreover, the story doesn’t climax in all’s-well-that-ends-well matrimony, instead building to a beautifully bittersweet moment of self-realization, one with a light-touch profundity that would make the Bard proud.

What results is a film that takes on the vicissitudes of life and love with honest concern, but also with a shrug of the shoulders — a movie that leaves us with a smile on our faces but also more than a few thoughts in our heads.

The mischievous paradox of Matías Piñeiro’s Viola is that it is at once devilishly complicated and perfectly simple.

Viola owes much of the pleasure it offers to the sorts of things one looks for in any good movie: an attractive cast, attractively photographed in an attractive location, and plotting that manages to feel relaxed without being lazy.

While the pleasures of the brief (65 minutes) Viola are modest, it displays an imagination and stylishness that marks the young filmmaker as someone to watch.

It’s a pleasant, negligible wisp of a movie, notable mostly for what it suggests of its director’s potential.