El amor a las cuatro de la tarde
2005 · 15m · Argentina
Directed by Sebastián Alfie
An upper-class lady depends on her maid to learn the ending of her favourite soap opera, in this story based on Fontanarrosa's 'Abrazarte así'.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A maid-and-mistress power flip built on soap opera gossip sounds precious, but Alfie actually subverts the class drama by making their dependency mutual—she's just smart enough not to play it for easy satire.
Alfie's adaptation of Fontanarrosa locates itself squarely in a lineage of Latin American social comedy-drama, and the restraint in handling intimacy between these two women—the formal distance, the small gestures that breach it—shows a filmmaker thinking hard about what cinema can do that literature cannot.
The entire film hinges on a single recurring moment: the maid withholding the spoiler, and you watch the mistress's face cycle through manipulation, pleading, and genuine connection in miniature—it's the kind of performance decision that makes a 15-minute premise sing.