27 Nights: A True Story Retold as a Tragicomedy

Buenos Aires. Martha Hoffman is a spry octogenarian, an eccentric patron of the arts who, despite her advanced age, leads an extremely active and independent life. A woman of great wealth inherited from her late husband, Martha spends lavishly to finance young artists, attend vernissages, and maintain a frenetic social life characterized by a vibrant sexual sphere. For her daughters Nora and Claudia, this "libertine" behavior is not only a source of embarrassment but also concern, as a potential new lover could threaten the substantial family fortune.

In 27 Nights, leveraging a suspicious dementia diagnosis signed by a compliant neurologist, the two heirs obtain a court order to commit Martha against her will to a psychiatric clinic. The elderly woman suddenly finds herself deprived of her freedom, confined to an institution as if she were truly insane, dangerous to herself and others. This is where Dr. Leandro Casares, a court-appointed expert, enters the scene, tasked by the court to determine Martha's true mental state. He will find himself grappling with a very complex case full of unknowns.

27 Nights and 27 Days

The screenplay for 27 Nights is inspired by real events that shook Argentinian society in 2005, causing a significant media scandal. The true protagonist of the story was the writer Natalia Kohen, who at the age of 86 was sued by her daughters, who accused her of squandering the family inheritance. In this adaptation, which is in some ways faithful and in others more liberal, inspired by Natalia Zito's novel, which is part biographical and part fictional, and which in turn modifies the actual events, we find ourselves facing a film that emphasizes Martha's eccentricity, with a strong accentuation of the sexual freedom dominating several passages of the film.

And herein lies one of the main problems with the operation: a news story with such sensitive themes would have deserved a more serious and thoughtful treatment than it received. Director Daniel Hendler, who also plays the expert Casares, opted for tones of light tragicomedy, using subtle humor and irony as primary tools. A legitimate stylistic choice, but one that ends up needlessly sugarcoating a story that had the potential to say much more about such deeply felt and universal topics.

Everything Too Easy

27 Nights also suffers from excessive predictability in its narrative and staging. There is never a moment when the screenplay makes us truly suspect Martha and her mental sanity, portraying the two daughters from the very first seconds as opportunistic women interested solely in money. Therefore, there is no surprise and no potential plot twists capable of making us doubt, even for a moment, the foregone happy ending. This absence of ambiguity, with the consequent refusal to explore gray areas, significantly weakens the existential soul of a plot that is truly too flimsy to stand on its own for all one hundred minutes of viewing, with, moreover, some lapses in style here and there in the handling of situations and secondary characters.

The development of the relationship between Martha and Casares itself, despite being the emotional core of the film, follows widely (re)seen shortcuts: the rigid and professional middle-aged man, without a noteworthy romantic life, who melts in front of the exuberant elderly woman hungry for adventures. And some of these hot tangents, limited almost exclusively to the verbal sphere, risk being unintentionally grotesque and clashing with the seemingly more reassuring climax of the whole.

Marilú Marini, an Argentinian actress with a long international career, brings to the screen a lively and magnetic protagonist, a true strong point in an otherwise improbably caricatured cast. And she remains the main reason for interest in an operation that failed to find the correct interpretation for addressing the underlying material.