The return of Marco Bechis to filmmaking after 10 years is a welcome surprise, and the terrain he covers in “Back to Buenos Aires” is a familiar one for the veteran Chilean-Italian director who himself was caught up in the nightmare of Argentina’s military dictatorship. Set in the present, with frequent flashbacks, the film tells the story of an Italian doctor involved in Argentina’s resistance in the 1970s who reluctantly goes back to the country to give testimony about his three-plus years in the Garage Olimpo concentration camp. Stylistically looking like an uneasy hybrid between horror and film noir, Bechis’ return fails to satisfy on multiple levels, including the emotional one, though there are a few memorable scenes and the crux of the tale is potent.
It’s no coincidence, of course, that the prison where Mariano Guerra (Adriano Giannini) was held, Garage Olimpo, is also the name of Bechis’ 1999 film. “Back to Buenos Aires,” however, is a very different movie, less visceral and more hallucinogenic, but also less gripping. It’s a film that tries to come to terms with survival guilt, avoiding pat judgments but hinting rather too strongly at the possibility of redemption through confession. Pervaded by silences that mirror the decades of silence that allowed war criminals to walk among us, the story unfolds through a back-and-forth of past and present, keeping pace with the revelations and Mariano’s increasingly fraught state.
