Ventana Sur: Meikincine Takes ‘Just Love,’ ‘Super Crazy’(EXCLUSIVE)
By John Hopewell
LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – BUENOS AIRES — Lucia and Julia Meik’s Buenos Aires boutique sales company Meikincine has acquired international sales rights to two of the more mainstream Argentine propositions at this year’s Ventana Sur: Andy Caballero and Diego Corsini’s “Just Love,” and “Re Loca,” the Argentine remake of Chile’s “Sin Filtro.”
The “Re Loca” deal is for world rights outside Latin America, where Paramount will handle distribution, as previously announced.
Teen comedy-musical “Solo el Amor” (“Just Love”) turns on the across-the-tracks romance between a pop band lead singer-writer Noah and Emma, a young over-achiever female lawyer, who literally bump into each other. Their love gives Noah’s songs an authentic edge they previously lacked. But Noah’s fame, millions of online followers and manipulating manager threaten to wreck their passionate affair. Can “just love” pull them through?
Making its market debut at on Dec. 12, “Just Love” stars 24-year-old Franco Masini, who broke through from 2010 playing the teen manager of pop group Rock Bones in Disney XD series “Peter Punk,” featured in telenovela “Esperanza Mía,” played Guillermo Pucio in Pablo Trapero’s “El Clan,” the biggest Argentine movie of 2015, co-starred in last year’s Telefe hit “Amar Después De Amar,” and is an Latino influencer with 1.7 million followers. A rare play in Argentine filmmaking for an often cinema-shy millennial audience, the movie figures in the top 20 of Argentine releases this year.
A remake of Nicolas López’s Chilean smash hit “Sin Filtro,“ Martin Zaidelis’ “Re Loca” has proved one of Argentina’s four biggest hits in 2018, notching up 750,000-plus admissions for UIP in Argentina, said ’s Lucía Meik. That puts “Re Loca” behind Luis Ortega’s “El Angel,” but not much below Gastón Duprat’s Venice-selected “My Masterpiece” and Juan Vera’s directorial debut “An Expected Love,” starring Ricardo Darín and Mercedes Morán. (Dollar grosses earned by these films have been minimized by recent inflation.)
As its Chilean original, “Re Loca” turns on Pilar, a 30-something woman who has spent years putting up with her “artist” husband, who is too unworldly to pay bills or open the door to the gas man, her psychiatrist and best friend, who never listen to her.
Suffering, she’s advised by a mysterious man to make herself a strange beverage, a mix of wine, milk, burnt rose petals and urine. Next day, she wakes up, incapable of not speaking her mind to everybody. That proves highly comic, but pretty disastrous, alienating the people she loves.
“Re Loca” represents the first project partnering Paramount and Argentina’s Telefe, both units of Viacom since it bought broadcast network Telefe in November 2016, adding it to Viacom International Media Networks Americas. Telefe produces with Sebastián Aloi’s Buenos Aires production house Aeroplano.
The best thing about “Re Loca,” according to Argentine critics at least, is the firepower and charisma of Natalia Oreiro as Pilar, “an actress who has tried-and-tested experience at carrying a film,” said a review in website Otros Cines. One example: “I Am Gilda,” the second highest-grossing domestic movie of the year in 2016.
“We work just a few films per year, but always attempting to have an eclectic sales slate,” said Lucía Meik, citing, of mainstream titles, “Just Love,” “Re Loca,” “Asu Mare 2,” “Locos de amor,” “Recreo,” and “Cuando dejes de quererme.”
At the same time, she said, “we also like films far from the mainstream, like ‘Belmonte,’ ‘Al Desierto,’ ‘Magallanes,’ ‘Solos.’”
Larger films may sell for more money, but arthouse films sometimes sell to more territories. A varied slate at least allows a sales company to not depend on a highly limited number of buyers in each foreign territory.
