Rejtman Returns: Minimalism, Earthquakes, and a Yoga Teacher Who Won't Give Up

Mubi’s algorithm placed it in ‘Suggestions for you’, but chance – that old acquaintance of Martín Rejtman’s cinema – did the rest. La práctica, the Argentine director’s latest film, is now available on the platform. And like everything Rejtman touches, it does not go unnoticed.

The story follows Gustavo, a yoga teacher played by Esteban Bigliardi, who goes through – more badly than well – the dissolution of his romantic relationship. Materiality hits him: he moves from house to house, maintains the class routine as best he can, gets injured once, gets injured twice. At the beginning of the film, he lives through the consequences of one of the many tremors that shake the Chilean surface (which, as an Argentine, he will call ‘earthquake’). Towards the end, another tremor, which he will no longer name.

Rejtman returns to his obsessions. The paradox of detached yet obsessive characters. The repetition of situations that mark, like a compass, a secret rhythm. The nose for capturing the tiny, crucial traits of the contemporary. And the humor: that internal, discreet, effective, measured rhythm assembled in repetition, like the beats in classic slapstick comedies.

Minimalist? That’s how they defined him in the nineties. But La práctica is not solemnity. It is Gustavo insisting despite the knee that rebels, despite the cast he will have to wear, despite the mother (Mirta Busnelli) who travels from Argentina to Chile, whether to help him or overwhelm him is unclear. He insists, observes – through him we observe –, tries to respect his own rules regarding the teacher-student relationship, travels again and again to a retreat to find something, that dose of meaning which – we know – is actually nowhere.

Rejtman’s cinema knows this. And accepts it, with a soft laugh in the background. Like that Silvia Prieto from 1999, which became ingrained in the imagination of an era along with the refreshing flood of New Argentine Cinema. Now, with La práctica, filmed in Chile, the director shows that his style does not age. The porcelain figurine, Rosario Bléfari, the Entel public phone, the soap brand ‘Brite’, the getaway to Mar del Plata: all of that resonates in a film that, like chance, needs no explanation.

Gustavo is not histrionic nor does he react with impetus to almost anything. But he insists. And that insistence, that ‘practice’ of the title, is what makes the film work. Because Rejtman knows that meaning is nowhere, but it’s worth seeking it anyway. With an injured knee, a cast, and an earthquake in the background.