Pope Francis also has a hardcover of his graphic novel. He has a loving relationship with his attractive wife who travels the world. Since he is a world-famous manga artist, he can afford to take care of his parents.
At face value, Ariel has it all. In fact, Ariel, the main character in Daniel Berman’s So Far So Good, has five children from three marriages, two cats, and two elderly parents.
“Didn’t anyone see my charger?” Ariel asks over breakfast, early in episode 1 of Officina Berman’s latest film “So Far, So Good,” part of Mediapro Studios, which premieres at this week’s Berlinale Series Market.
“Has anyone seen my little padlock?” asks Ariel (Benjamin Vicuna) as well. Even though the whole family is home, no one responds. He comes out of his bedroom and makes his way down the hallway to the door, avoiding the kids while his son makes a hellish noise playing the piano. The camera follows the scene like crazy, as if it were filming a scene on a battlefield.
At the age of 50, Ariel begins lifting weights at the gym for the first time in 10 years in order to get in shape to receive the Vatican Prize for her achievements, but suffers a hernia. The muscles in his left side looked like “Kobe meat about to fall apart,” his doctor told him, with little encouragement.
Burman, who launched Oficina Burman in 2014, has produced notable series such as the undercover thriller “Iosi, the Regretful Spy,” which was considered the best TV work in Berlin in 2022.
A pillar of New Argentine cinema, Berman has built a 30-year career poking fun at the neuroses, complexities, and ironies of life with light-hearted humor. So Far So Good, produced by Berman and co-directed with Daniel Hendler, who won the Berlin Silver Bear for Best Actor for his performance in Berman’s The Lost Embrace, is no exception.
This is also one of Berman’s most autobiographical works, he confesses. Adding a touch of authenticity to “So Far, So Good,” Berman was 10 minutes late for an interview with Variety because he was being seen by a doctor in an oxygen chamber undergoing treatment for a dangerous knee before heading to Berlin to present “So Far, So Good,” one of 20 titles in the Berlinale Series Market Select.
Ariel’s hernia and reduced mobility play into play as part of a larger picture of his lack of empowerment during his midlife crisis.
“It’s made into meat,” Berman says. However, he continues, what weighs on Ariel is more “emotional” than “physical.”
“In recent years, there has been a much-needed movement for films and series with female protagonists, which is very important. But it seems as if this has happened in a way that undermines the portrait of male reality, when in reality the two realities coexist,” Berman reflects.
“So Far So Good,” distributed by MediaPro Studio Distribution, has a male protagonist whose conflict “isn’t about violence or femininity, it’s more existential, and it’s the moment when he starts to father his parents, and it’s almost like he stops being a son, and no one cares for him anymore, and it makes no sense,” says Berman.
However, Ariel is always in demand. When the Pope prelate suggests that she write her acceptance speech next weekend, Ariel explains that her weekend is not her weekend. “My son is in a comedy show, my daughter is driven everywhere, and my other son plays piano all day. I have two babies and two cats. And every hour from home, one of my wife’s friends will host a barbecue. And I was thinking of visiting the family to see if they were still alive.”
Still, Berman insists there’s no sense of victimhood in the series. Ariel is a product of his own decisions and circumstances. “Creating a series with a male protagonist in need of attention was unimaginable just 10 years ago. Now it’s an interesting look at the intangibles of men of a certain age who need love and attention.”
Berman calls “So Far, So Good” “a comedy about andropause told with plenty of humor and emotion.”
That feeling seems to be heightened in later episodes. As for Berman, “There’s a beautiful story told in the series about a swarm of butterflies called a kaleidoscope, because it’s an optical illusion that the butterflies are together, they’re not a family, they’re just moving closely together. Often families are optical illusions, too.”
“Ariel understands that she has to carry the weight of her parents’ decline, but she can’t ask anyone else to do it. Butterflies leave their cocoons behind and fly away. People change every day and leave things behind. Children leave behind toys. Things they leave behind on their life’s journey. All these things that are done are not sources of conflict but identities. When we have nothing left to share or lose, we are left behind and we can make peace with the idea that we are “marginalized,” Berman concluded.
“So Far, So Good” is produced by Argentina’s Oficina Bruman and Uruguay-based Cimarron. Both companies, The Mediapro Studio, are producing a six-part series for Argentine cable TV, internet and SVOD operator Flow. Flow acquired distribution rights in Latin America and the rest of the world through The Mediapro Studio Distribution.
