The return of Marco Bechis to filmmaking after 10 years is a welcome surprise, and the terrain he covers in “Back to Buenos Aires” is a familiar one for the veteran Chilean-Italian director who himself was caught up in the nightmare of Argentina’s military dictatorship. Set in the present, with frequent flashbacks, the film tells the story of an Italian doctor involved in Argentina’s resistance in the 1970s who reluctantly goes back to the country to give testimony about his three-plus years in the Garage Olimpo concentration camp. Stylistically looking like an uneasy hybrid between horror and film noir, Bechis’ return fails to satisfy on multiple levels, including the emotional one, though there are a few memorable scenes and the crux of the tale is potent.
Bechis accompanies these scenes with flashbacks to when medical student Mariano (Eduardo Hoy) was working for the Resistance together with Muneca (Olivia Nuss), whose daughter Evelyn is the woman in the present putting pressure on him to reveal what he knows about her mother’s disappearance. The scene where Muneca is taken away is one of the most effective in the film, especially when it melds past and present. This shift between the two time periods creates an effective dialogue as we learn what actually happened in the prison, less graphically represented than in “Garage Olimpo” but still conveying the brutality inside.
