The Birthday Gift: Short Film Review. By Joe Muldoon.
A small birthday gathering, two guest strangers, and a life-changing secret; just what is this birthday gift? Based on The Abuelas by playwright Stephanie Alison Walker, director Arianna Ortiz’s adaptation The Birthday Gift is a mysterious short that is more of a glimpse into an ongoing story, rather than a complete tale in itself. Soledad (Paula Pizzi) is determined to throw herself a birthday party, and alongside her daughter Gabriela (Cruz Gonzalez-Cadel) and son-in-law Marty (Nate Santana), invites a fellow churchgoer, César (Ignacio Serricchio), to join in on the festivities. Soledad’s fellow congregant is unexpectedly accompanied by an older lady, Carolina (Margarita Lamas), and together they bring a secret that threatens to rock the hosts’ foundations.
What’s so clever about the short is that the most important events of the story aren’t shown on-screen; they’re either implied or retold by the guests. Without knowing the history of Argentina’s ‘Dirty War’, an almost decade-long period of state-sponsored violence between 1974-1983, there’s a lot of context missing as an audience member. For non-Argentine viewers, this is likely to be the case, and it puts us in the place of Marty, a mostly non-speaker of Spanish; the otherness, outsideness, he feels is felt by those watching, not in-the-know.
The performances are fantastic across the board, and all contribute seamlessly towards communicating the implied history behind each partygoer’s past. Carolina’s restraint isn’t through shyness, but the pain of harbouring a secret; César’s discomfort isn’t through fear of being caught in a lie; Gabriela’s growing agitation despite her having invited her guests— just what is this secret, and what does it have to do with Argentina’s dark past?
Unlike Gabriela’s guests, The Birthday Gift doesn’t overstay its welcome, and nor does it rush in unfolding its secrets. We’re only here to peek through a small window of an already-ongoing story, and it’s a 16-minute span that takes its time, giving us enough without showing all its cards. And it’s a real story; there’s a real-life history behind this story; real anguish in the writing, in the performances, in the background.
By Joe Muldoon
