With the plot from a short novel with the same name written by Mario Benedetti, this movie, La tregua (The truce), doesn't pays homage in any way to the great story conceived by the author born in Uruguay. This results only in my acknowledge that it never ceases to amaze me how bad our motion pictures can be, so this is the latest example. The novel has a very strong backbone, whose narrative force lays on it's powerful as well as sad and dark storyline; it is about an old widower tired of his vacuous live, on the brink of retirement, and with grown up kids. All this is shown to us because he keeps track of his life and feelings in a diary. Then one day a new coworker comes along. She´s Laura Avellaneda, a pretty young girl who restarts the flame of the long time dead passion in the man, and falls for her. Then the girl starts an affair with him, and from this point his life has a sudden change; to tell you more it would be a spoiler, but only in the interest for reading the book, not for watching this movie.
The quality on both pieces goes equally in the opposite directions; while the book goes up for being recognized as one of the few masterpieces of Benedetti's prolific work, the movie goes down without a parachute. This film is flattest than flat, with no heart, and many bad acting jobs (mainly by soap operas performers); also, there are the wrong chosen scenarios (many times it looks like an advertisement about the joy of visiting Veracruz), and the addition of non dramatic subplots that, instead of giving new and more interesting ramifications on the story, adds lots of weight in terms of running time that makes watching this even more boring and slow, ergo painful. The main problem with this film is it's lack of soul and the whole atmosphere that comes with it: you can sense an effortless job in all the actors (or overplayed, which is worst). It's really sad to witness how a great story on paper sinks like this in a movie, just by being adapted with no real intention nor respect. Don't waste your time with it, just like our mexican producers like to do so with their money.
Few mexican movies has been so awful, and I've seen plenty. That's why I rate it 1 out of 10
