CLFF 2013: From Tuesday to Tuesday

From Tuesday to Tuesday, from Argentina, was the first film I saw at the recent Chicago Latino Film Festival.  It's a dark story that takes place over a week, thus the title. The main character is Juan, a worker in a small clothing factory, who also has a night job as a bouncer. Due to his bouncer job, he works out a lot at a gym to bulk up, but the membership fee and the protein shakes are expensive for his budget. His factory co-workers make fun of his workout efforts and belittle him, because he keeps silent and doesn't fight back. Every day he stops at a convenience store to buy a treat for his daughter. His wife saves their money and hopes to have enough to repair the leaking roof of their home, but Juan instead wants to use the money to buy workout equipment to open his own gym.

These details about Juan's life come into play together when one night he witnesses the convenience store lady being attacked, and uses this encounter to his own advantage. As in several of the Latino films I saw, and probably prevalent in those macho cultures, women's rights and identities are not very well respected. Juan blackmails her attacker for money. Although Juan does not actively hurt the convenience store lady and keeps his involvement secret from her, his actions are shockingly unexpected as to the personality we had seen until then--the meek and silent "gentle giant" is suddenly ruthless in order to fulfill his dream of opening a gym.


The film ends without letting us inside Juan's mind, to explore the effects of his actions on himself and his psyche and if he feels any guilt. Perhaps those feelings will come later, but where the film ends it is ambiguous. One can’t help wonder what his views might be if he considered it was his daughter or wife who was attacked. Certainly he wouldn’t be as self-serving. Also, is his dream of opening a workout gym really a dream of an entrepreneur, or is it something that feeds into the maleness of his ego because he is passive against the people who belittle him?  Does Juan have latent bully tendencies, or is he a victim on a slow boil? These unaswered questions left me thinking about who Juan really is.