For the weekend: the most moving Argentine film of 2025 has just debuted on Netflix

As the body imposes limits and time becomes a cruel enemy, we are led to rethink what we might want from the future. At this stage of life, free will is a privilege that not everyone achieves, even if the desire for any autonomy never dies. Getting old requires adaptations and self-sacrifice, but there are also unedifying twists and turns that put the most unshakable genius to the test. Martha Hoffman, the protagonist of “27 Nights”, has been taking advantage of everything her fortune can give her, until she suffers a serious setback. Uruguayan Daniel Hendler weaves a gentle but incisive family drama about the relationship between money and character, leaving room for a disturbing analysis of true madness and false lucidity. Inspired by the 2021 novel of the same name by writer and psychoanalyst Natalia Zito, Hendler and co-writers Agustina Liendo, Mariano Llinás and Martin Maureguí examine the real case of a woman compulsorily admitted to an asylum by her daughters. From that point on, a war of nerves begins in which every laugh brings a haze of uneasiness.

At 83 years old, Martha is guiltlessly rich. Her friends say that she lived in Paris with Pina Bausch (1940-2009) in the 1950s, and her story is made up of these tasty mythologies, which she makes a point of galvanizing. She hangs out with a group of much younger artists, the money starts to dwindle and then Miriam and Olga start demanding satisfaction from her. Shortly afterwards, she exchanges her mansion in San Telmo, a neighborhood in the upscale area of ​​Buenos Aires, for a modest room in a psychiatric institution, while the heiresses take whatever measures they deem appropriate — for themselves, obviously. Without a doubt, the cast’s affinity is one of the film’s strong points, and Hendler takes full advantage of the scenes in which Marilú Marini, Paula Grinszpan and Carla Peterson appear together. And it’s good to always improve, especially in an Argentine production.

Leandro Gabriel Casares, an expert appointed by the Buenos Aires Court of Justice, investigates Martha’s supposed mental imbalance, having just come out of isolation during the break to which the title alludes, and the film takes on additional color. It is Leandro who will determine whether she is capable of running her own life and, of course, managing the Nababesque heritage, using the notes she fills a notebook with. There cannot be two people as different as this sweet, sober man and his guinea pig, a lady with good manners, but who makes no concessions regarding the way she wants to spend her last years, and the plot follows this path, breaking up into collateral but insightful narratives, which remove the veil of ageism and the cowardly stratagems of Miriam and Olga to pocket the fat inheritance that does not yet belong to them. The unusual bond between Martha and Leandro is the film within the film, and Marini and the multitasking Hendler get the job done. The director achieves a sophistication that perhaps he wasn’t even looking for, focusing on the diffuse beauty of his character’s relationship with Marini’s passionate libertarian dondoca. Martha Hoffman carried on her eccentricities until she was 104 years old. His case inspired changes in Argentine laws, which began to prohibit forcible hospitalizations.