Luna de Avellaneda, a social club in a working class district of Buenos Aires has seen better days. In fact, we are given a short peek at the place in another era. The club was full of life, a crowded place where people went to have a good time and mingle with friends and neighbors. That look to the past happens during a night when a sort of fair is going on. That is the night in which Roman comes into the world as his mother, attending the feast, gives birth to him in the club house. As a gesture, Roman Maldonado is made free member for life. Roman's fate was sealed the night when he was born. His love for the institution will never die.When we next come to the club, years have gone by. In fact, seventy years the club has been in existence. Sadly, Aquiles, founder of the Luna, and the board of directors are told they owe forty thousand pesos in back taxes they neglected to pay. Roman, now active in the affairs of the Luna, goes to the municipality to find out what can be done. One of the problems is the dwindling membership and people not socializing as before. Alejandro, who is a member of the club has received a proposal from someone interested in developing the site into a sort of amusement park which will employ 200 workers from the club. What Alejandro proposes is to sell their beloved Luna where he stands to make a handsome profit.It is the end of an era. To complicate matters, Roman's marriage has reached an impasse. His wife Veronica, a school teacher, wants a separation. Dario, his son, wants to leave the country to go to try his luck in Spain. The place is crumbling and no one knows the solution to bring back the Luna of Avellaneda to a semblance of what it was.Juan Jose Campanella, co-wrote and directed this film that is laden with symbolism. One can see the parallel between the Luna and the country, Argentina. Both have seen splendor, but alas, both are going through difficult times. The back taxes from the social club stands for the money the country owes because in spite of having the potential to be great, not much is being produced. Dario, the young son of Roman, like some of his contemporaries want to leave to seek a better life, in his case to Spain, only to see the dream probably ending at present because of the high unemployment in Spain. Loyalty, as well as nostalgia, are two of the themes that come into play. Only Roman and a handful of members vote to keep the club going. Ricardo Darin is an actor that always gives his best in everything he appears. He shows he can carry a picture as he has proved with "Son of the Bride", "The Secret in Their Eyes", "El mismo amor, la misma lluvia", all directed by Mr. Campanella. Mr. Darin is a welcome presence in any film in which he decides to appear. He shows a special understanding with the director.Mr. Campanella always include Eduardo Blanco in his films. His Amadeo is not exactly one of his best creations and the way the character is written it does not make much sense, but he is around to give the picture some sort of comic relief. Daniel Fanego, Mercedes Moran, Valeria Bertuccelli and the late Spanish actor Jose Luis Lopez Vazquez do good work for Mr. Campanella.

Luna de Avellaneda is a 70 years old club, in the good ol' days it had more than 8.000 members. There they teach ballet, you can play basketball, you can chat with your friends... In short: it's your family out of your family. Now, times have changed, things are getting hard and people don't have much money. The club has nowadays less than 300 members, and has lots of debts. They're going' to have to sell the facilities, they say they're gonna build a casino, they say there will be a job for everybody, they say prosperity will be back in town... they say...This is such of a metaphor of the whole Argentinian situation. He uses this club to represent the reality of a country that's been hurt very deeply, surrounded by looters and sick of promises. A country which uses the sense of humor and the sarcasm as a medicine.Two hours of rage, love after love, and tons of hope... (we really need that) *My rate: 8/10

Campanella is the kind of filmmaker that will always try to reach your human side, that will try to get through you by your heart not by your head. His stories have some kind of infallible tenderness, something that goes beyond the fact that you can feel identified with a character or with a certain situation; a tenderness that's universal, that is the same for all man kind. "Luna de Avellaneda" is not at all the exception to the rule: it's just another Campanella movie. A simple plot, with simple characters, very familiar places (maybe too familiar) dialogs that can mix really damn good trivial elements with deep ones, and smart humor, all these things, create the big panoramic picture of what this movie is. Great cast (Darín, Morán, Blanco mostly) and great production (for an Argentinian movie) do the rest. Then, all you have to do is sit and enjoy this happy go lucky movie, where every bad is eclipsed by some great good, and everything is just there to reveal you a lesson to remember, an that's to keep hope, and to hold on to things that matter although time may pass them by."¡Bancate al amor!"

At once universal, in its complex Dickensian portrait of a society, and extremely timely - narrating in microcosm the recent economic crisis in Argentina - Luna de Avellaneda is a beautiful, eloquent film that will resonate deeply with both Argentine viewers and audiences worldwide. Very funny and very moving, the film is rich in human drama, its characters ranging from a small boy whose braces are killing him to an old man on his deathbed, with all sorts of variations in between - a man who discovers his wife is having an affair, a son who wants to escape the catastrophic situation by emigrating to Spain, a drunk who falls in love and tries to reform, a girl from a shanty town who wants to learn ballet. Small miracles occur throughout the film. The dialogues are brilliant, the acting consistently strong. As in reality (though not often depicted in films), economic concerns are never far from anyone's mind, yet at the same time the emotional life persists. Rarely have I seen such a felicitious melding of the two, as when the central character, Roman, whose marriage is failing, goes to buy cologne to try to spice things up and, after perusing the range of possibilities, can only afford the cheapest, and most acrid-smelling, scent on the shelves. Or when a still infuriated divorcee invites her ex to a romantic dinner in a five star restaurant and, after ordering numerous bottles of the best champagne, then slips away leaving him to foot the bill. I cannot recommend this film highly enough.