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María Luisa Bemberg, Argentina’s leading female director until her death in 1995, made films about women as complex and difficult as herself — the heroines of Camila (1984), Miss Mary (1986), and Yo, la peor de todas/I, Worst of All (1990) frustrate traditional and feminist stereotypes. Such is the case with her first feature, 1980’s Momentos, in which Lucía (Graciela Dufau) drives the men in her life to passivity or despair. She’s a middle-aged landscape gardener, an allusion to Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows that Bemberg picks up with some stodgy mirror and window imagery. (It could be wires: at one point a pair of characters ponder whether to see Kramer Vs. Kramer or Cries and Whispers.) Married to a placid psychiatrist older than herself and childless, Lucía has a fling with Nicholas, a needy, self-centered, married car salesman 15 years her junior. But before you can say Oedipal complex, there’s another twist — Nicholas is the same age as her first husband — and one true love — when he died. Except for Dufau, the acting isn’t up to such dense material, and Bemberg’s rudimentary style makes this look like an ’80s TV show — say, Dynasty. A promising start, however, to a career cut sadly short. In Spanish with English subtitles. (90 minutes)
BY PETER KEOUGH
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