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Argentinian director duo Gastón Duprat and Mariano Cohn's fourth feature, a satirical dark comedy premiered in Venice's main competition this year, THE DISTINGUISHED CITIZEN is simply riveting, uncompromising and entertaining to the hilt.

Our protagonist is a laureate of Nobel Prize in Literature, the fictional Argentinian writer Daniel Mantovani (Martínez), the movie opens with him accepting the award in the regal ceremony, and his forthright but true-to-self acceptance speech politely jeers at the fact that he is not much a fan of monarchy and dreads that it will portend the waning of his creativity, which unfortunately transpires to be true. Five years later, still stuck in the writer's block after being crowned the top honor, Daniel, who lives as an expatriate most of his life, eyes an invitation from his hometown, Salas, a small village in Argentina, among his swamped schedule, he is invited to accept "The Distinguished Citizen" title of the town, a place where he hasn't returned over 40 years, not even for his father's funeral.

Why now is the right time to go? The more practical motive is to look for inspiration so that he can bring an end to the maddening dry spell, and Salas has never failed to proffer him that, most of his distinguished works benefit from his past experiences in that dreadful town. Daniel intends to go there alone incognito, which ends in vain right after embarking on the plane, upon arrival, a familiar taste of backwater desultoriness which has eluded him for too long, generates wry and side- splitting laughter, and the effect doesn't ameliorated by the casual-dressing mayor (Vincente) and the ensuing celebration of a returning national treasure among close-knit townsfolk.

Daniel reunites with his old-time friend Antonio (Brieva) and Irene (Frigerio), the girlfriend he left four decades ago, now they are married and have a daughter Julia (Chavanne, who will try anything to get out of the jerkwater milieu, even if she has to sleep with an older man who once was her mother's old flame), but discord starts to disrupt his triumphant homecoming, out of their excessive pride of the town, some get peeved for Daniel's negative portrayal of the characters in his books, which are based on real-life denizens of Salas; bureaucratic interference, small-minded bigotry, sex-ensnarement all emerge onto the surface and wrong-foot his tranquil sojourn, Daniel will also dishearteningly find out that Salas hasn't progressed in all these years, to a point where his own safety will be hung by a thread when jealousy, hostility, idiocy and rancor are all hiked up, can the distinguished citizen dodge the bullet in the highly suspenseful finale? A debt he must pay to his birthplace, the main wellspring of his intellectual works.

Duprat-Cohn duo dexterously basks in Daniel's self-seeking mare's nest which is deliciously peppered with gallows humor, poker-face eccentricity and delightful plot-twists. Their leading actor Oscar Martínez, fully embodies and balances Daniel's academic finesse, provoked exasperation and emotional ambivalence, unsurprisingly and deservingly bags the Volpi Cup for BEST ACTOR in Venice '73.

Dady Brieva dazzles in his Manichaean contrasts of chumminess and insidiousness, not to mention his bizarre dance movements, spontaneously hysterical and cringe-inducing, and Manuel Vicente's smooth persona as the easy-going mayor is wonderfully approachable and diverting, whereas Andrea Frigerio's mellow former lover is the only beacon signals a faint hope and nostalgia, but ineffectually dims in the context of the silly but dangerous game played among provincially macho men.

No one can choose his or her birthplace where most of us spend our formative years, and once fled, we'd better not go back, because there is always some past bogeyman trying to lure you back, hunt you down and tear you apart, that is what called "homesick entrapment", the bond can not be severed, but should be buried in a safe place in our memory, only occasionally pops up to remind us who we are.

The movie The Distinguished Citizen is a parody of the question: what is art? The movie opens up with the lead player receiving an award. An award with lots of status attached to it. As the movie takes the player forward into time, the lead actor, owns a mansion filled with books in Barcelona - high in the mountains and overlooking the cityscape below. The Distinguished Citizen, (which I think should be called, The Distinguished Gentleman because the lead actor is very similar in style to Richard Gere, a very suave man of a high class) seems to have a void inside of him, because the film shots seem to suggest a loneliness. In order to attempt at filling this void the lead actor travels to his home town. There one episode of dismay merges into another episode of dismay - however in a round-about way, this is exactly what the lead actor appeared to be wanting and needing in his soulless life - which appeared void of human meaning. Somehow, the lead character emerges from everything in a very positive way and in the end he becomes even more successful than before. I like movies that have a good beginning, middle and clear end, and this was one of those movies. It was a good film experience for me.

"El ciudadano ilustre" or "The Distinguished Citizen" is an Argentinean 2-hour film from 2016 that was the country's official submission to the Oscars last year, but did not manage the same successes like other entries from the South American country recently as it did not even make the short list of 9. However, it's all good because the movie managed a great deal of recognition at all kinds of other award shows. It is at this point probably the career-defining work for directors Gastón Duprat and Mariano Cohn and it seems Duprat's brother Andrés was in charge of the script here. This is a film not based on real events, the story of a Nobel Peace Prize winner for Literature and right early on in his acceptance speech we see that he is a complicated character indeed as what he talks about, the simple man's worries that his works may no longer be about as proved through this prestigious award, eventually satisfies the upper class again. What follows afterward is a return for him to his roots and exactly to these simple men's worries.

The main character is definitely not a saint as we find out on many occasions, even if many of the conflicts are not really because of him. The best example is his main antagonist as he cannot accept the writer's artistic integrity that he picked another painting. Still, even that one makes a point asking why the protagonist did not even return for his dad's funeral. This is not a film about returning home and finding one's true roots. It is actually the opposite as it is about returning home and finding that all roots are gone basically and that the people there, partially because of envy, do not like you anymore, even if they try their best at not showing their disapproval for the most part. The film starts relatively light, but becomes darker and darker the longer it goes in showing us how he does not fit in there anymore. References about violence and death are the logical consequence. I think this was a really good character study with many interesting moments and I also liked that it was not all bad at the end, for example he helped a young writing prospect and maybe he saw himself in him too when he was younger obviously. The film delivers from both comedy and drama perspective I think. The only major thing I did not like was in the end that the daughter's ex-boyfriend pulled the trigger. I was missing a bit of a connection there. Sure he was a brute and may be angry and sad that she left him if she really did, but it felt slightly unrealistic to me. Maybe the guy who invited him to dinner would have been the better choice. But then again I like the idea that it was one of his closest that fired the shot, even if the filmmakers eventually weren't brave enough to really kill him off. Eventually, we see him again in the world where he belongs to. As a whole a film that was fun to watch from start to finish and filmmakers can learn a lot from it I'm sure. It's witty, deep and relevant and on a subjective side-note it has the stunning Belén Chavanne in it, a Gaucho mix of Emma Stone and Tracy Spiridakos. Minor flaws keep me from giving this one an even higher rating. But I still definitely very much recommend seeing this one. It really took way too long to finally reach Germany. But the wait was worth it and I give it a comfortable thumbs-up.

The movie starts deceptively simple. At first, I thought of it as a light-hearted comedy. It is anything but. The movie is full of surprises.

Although every character is belivable, the situations they engender verge on the surreal. The movie is rich with not-so-subtle irony.

Amazing movie!!! Not your usual topic and not with your usual characters. All I can say is I feel identified a lot with these movie because I came from a hometown with a lot of similarities with Salas, at least in the folklore of the place, the marvellous characters of the town, all with his own problems and with his own way of living. I can't say I was boring at anytime when I see these movie, and the movie don't have any type of action scenes that make an impact in the common eye of the viewer , but the work of the main and secondary characters are so good through all the movie that I can't complaint. Not at all. As a young man with some ambitions and aspirations to continue my career in a foreign country, I hope my homecoming would be different, in a positive way, than Daniel's. And remember, to be is not being.

I read this film as an anatomy of the artist's ego. From the opening ceremony to his panic flight from his home town Daniel Mantovani is a completely self-absorbed and destructive figure. Whether the resultant novels balance the scales is an unanswerable question. But the question stands: How far can art go to excuse the artist from the criteria for a good human being? Daniel starts in the catbird seat - receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature - but in an aggressively disrespectful manner. He eschews the tuxedo, refuses to bow to the presiding royals and declares that he will now cease writing because that very award suggests he has not been upsetting enough to the literary world. He lives in a palatial estate. The massive library curving under his main floor suggests that culture is the foundation of his house, his life. As he proceeds through a litany of refusing invitations and cancelling engagements that anchor seems to weigh him down. Impetuously accepting an immediate visit to his small home town confirms his exclusive self-concern. Daniel's return to the small town which he fled - and refused to return to, even for his father's funeral - is into the lion's den. What begins as the town's fulsome celebration of their world-famous escapee turns into their vicious rejection. His succession of car breakdowns proves the animosity mutual. Daniel has been basing his stories on the people and places he remembers from that town, Salas. We see it as a dismal, empty, pedestrian community that shrinks further in its every pretension to honour him: the windy mayor, the honorary citizen medal, the volunteer fire department, the vapid beauty queen. On the spectrum of classical music it's a Mantovani. Whatever his reason for returning there, Daniel refuses to respect the town and its people. He's courteous to the man who invites him home for lunch. But the request to fund a young man's $10,000 wheelchair becomes an opportunity for him to lecture the father on the inappropriateness of personal charity. The disaster begins when Daniel heads a jury selecting works for the community art show. He shows no respect for the community's needs and responsibilities, rejecting works here for the reasons he might in Buenos Aires or Madrid. He promotes one work for an accidental expressiveness that attests to Daniel's sophistication not the artist's. The consequent attack on him spreads from his disrespect for their efforts to his insulting treatment of their people and traditions jn his fiction. Given the references to Borges and the Latin American setting, we might be primed to expect Magic Realism. The stark colours in the streets, the vulgarity in the Volcano bar, the extravagant characterization may approach that - but the ending cinches it. Daniel is forcibly taken on a wild pig hunt by his old friend Antonio (who married Daniel's old girlfriend Irene) and the yob dating their daughter. Still jealous of Irene's long-held love for Daniel, Antonio takes great pleasure in running him out of town, especially as he fires his rifle at him, narrowly missing. But Daniel is felled by the yob, whose specialty has been defined as efficiently killing the prey their clients miss. So. Does Daniel die there? Could be. Then the epilogue in which his publisher presents him with his new novel, based on that trip, could be the last story the novelist tells. He's telling it to himself. His reappearance sans beard lets him live the story he told earlier of the two rival brothers, both doomed to murder. Or Daniel survives the marksman's shot, is rushed to a hospital and flown home, where his replay of the adventures we have witnessed turns into his new novel. The scar he reveals could be from that hunt - or some other accident. This ending may be harder to believe. It's also undercut by the pointlessly loud glasses he wears at the end, implying an exaggeration of vision. We don't have to choose between those endings. For the point is that Daniel is compelled to tell stories. To pontificate, as re:the wheelchair. To strike a posture whether dominant or recessive, as when he responds to the young woman's question about whether an artist needs to suffer in order to create. No, he says now, but she pops up with the proof that he said the reverse elsewhere. It's because he has to tell a story that he can't maintain an ethical responsibility. So he'll abandon the wheelchair denial. He slips into the matinee seduction by that young woman. Indeed he's on the verge of describing it to friend Antonio when the woman appears - she's Irene's and Antonio's daughter. Daniel will do anything, on impulse, for the sake of a good story. That's why he leans over to kiss Irene in her stalled car - as if testing a new (and disastrous) plot-line. He lives to narrate. His roots are in his library not his emotions and relationships. Great artists live by their own standards. That's how we lesser console ourselves.