Still from 'El Secreto de Sus Ojos'

This should probably come as no surprise, but since the Juan José Capanella film 'El Secreto de Sus Ojos' won the Best Foreign Language Oscar last month, it's been discovered by American film reviewers. Just in big-name examples, in the last three days the New York Times has run two articles on the film--a feature by former South American correspondent Larry Rohter and a review by Manohla Dargis--and the Wall Street Journal film critic Joe Morgentern has weighed in as well. Rohter and Morgenstern are largely positive in their assessment's (although Rohter's wasn't a review), while Dargis, though respectful, trots out "messy", "outlandish" and "preposterous" along the way. As someone who's seen the film (twice), I tend to agree with Morgentern's boosterism (and not just because I'm an Argentine booster). The acting is lovely and nuanced, the Racing stadium scene is amazing, and the toned-down Francella is a comic genius.

Oh, and regarding Dargis' complaint that the film's use of the military dictatorship is not persuasive: the reason it's not is because the film's action takes place before then, during the last of the pre-dictatorship Perón years.