When a comedy, with dramatic overtones, runs like water, flows, never gets bogged down, there is no possible distraction in the living room if we are watching it via streaming. And that happens with 27 nightsthe exceptional film by and with Daniel Hendlerwhich is already in Netflixand that has a notable cast, and we are not only talking about Marilu Mariniits protagonist.
Released in very few theaters a few days ago, it is already part of the Red N catalogue.
Hendler’s fourth film as director, after Norberto just late, The candidate and the still unpublished here loose endwhich was in Venice in September and opens at the end of November, is based on real events that happened to the artist Natalia Kohen, although the names of the characters have changed.
The film owes its title to the number of nights that Martha Hoffman (Marilú Marini) remained hospitalized in a neuropsychiatric hospital, deceived by her two daughters Myriam (Carla Peterson) and Olga (Paula Grinszpan). The reason given by her heirs is that Martha, an art collector, at 83 years old, was squandering her fortune and throwing lavish parties with people who, according to them, lived off of Martha.
Hendler, who also co-stars in the film, for the first time he has directed, is the expert appointed to determine whether Martha “has her ducks in a row.” The daughters want to have control over Martha – or over her money – and Casares (Hendler), together with an assistant (Julieta Zylberberg), without being a “journalist or researcher”, as he himself says, begins to notice that a famous doctor was the one who diagnosed her with frontotemporal dementia, an argument that Myriam and Olga cling to to seclude their mother.
The real case – Natalia Kohen was a kind of patron – was known, but it was learned that the record was not signed by Dr. Facundo Manes, but by her lawyer, who admitted not having personally evaluated the woman. And we do not continue because we would spur what follows.
And what follows, like what started, is great.
The agility of the dialogues, the concatenation of the scenes, the performances of Hendler, Marini – and mainly of the entire female cast – make the plot very bearable, without bumps and with surprising twists from time to time.
Hendler, based on the book by Natalia Zito, co-wrote the script with Mariano Llinás and Martín Mauregui – at the same time co-authors of the libretto of Argentina, 1985by Santiago Miter, who is producer of 27 nights– and the grace in each text that falls to Marini’s lot makes it impossible to take out the eyes of the interpreter of, among others, The sleepwalkers.
Marini can link, chain different emotions with the same pulse and impulse. How much of it is his merit and how much of Hendler as a director is something that is not even worth finding out, but rather letting the delight come to us like this, without pauses or respites.
The cast, in which there are many well-known faces, in addition to those named, who have cameos or small roles, or not so much, such as Germán De Silva, Alejandra Flechner, Humberto Tortonese, Jimena Anganuzzi, Ezequiel Díaz, Roberto Suárez, Alan Sabbagh or Gonzalo Urtizberea who appear and it is not that scenes have been written for them to shine, but that they are simply good, fulfilling the role they should in their scenes.
27 nights They can see it at home, or on a big movie screen, like the one at the Gaumont, when it deserved a much, much larger commercial release.
Dramatic comedy. Argentina, 2025. 108′, SAM 13. Of: Daniel Hendler. Con: Marilú Marini, Daniel Hendler, Carla Peterson, Paula Grinszpan, Julieta Zylberberg, Germán De Silva, Humberto Tortonese. Available in: Netflix.
Daniel Hendler is the expert who evaluates the character of Marilú Marini: wonderful. Photos Netflix
Carla Peterson and Paula Grinszpan are the daughters of Martha (Marilú Marini)
Daniel Hendler and, when not, an always credible Julieta Zylberberg.