Uruguayan director and screenwriter Federico Veiroj became known worldwide in 2008 with the film Acne, in which he addressed the issue of a teenager's sexual awakening and his family problems. The film was nominated that year as best Ibero-American film at the Spanish Film Academy's Goya Awards.

It was his first feature film, and although for me the film has several flaws, it showed that Veiroj was a filmmaker with an interesting style, which we should be aware of.

In 2010 I confirm this, with the release of the film La vida útil (The useful life), a more mature work that received excellent reviews from the specialists. The Apostle of 2015 and Belmonte in 2018, consolidated Veiroj as an important filmmaker, with interesting themes and stories to tell.

I expected to see the last film of the filmmaker, which was released in 2019, but I was able to see it at the end of last year. "Así hablo el Cambista" (The Moneychanger) has left me a little bewildered, you could say that it is a film by Federico Veiroj and the story was quite interesting, but the mix between drama, social events and comedy, has left me a bittersweet taste.

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What is the plot?

During the convulsed decade of the 1970s, several Latin American countries were going through economic crises and were governed by pro-fascist dictatorships. In Uruguay there was a military regime, with most of the institutions in economic decline, the country became an excellent place where corrupt politicians and criminals from Brazil and Argentina used to launder money of dubious origin. Humberto Brause works in Mr. Schweinsteiger's accounting firm and is engaged to Gudrun, his boss' daughter. Humberto sees the opportunity of his life and starts a great career in currency management. Ambition and money will make him accept an incredible deal to launder such a large amount of money, which will get him into even more trouble.

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The story was quite interesting, especially to examine that time in Uruguay, where it was a paradise for mafias and corrupt politicians from neighboring countries, to legitimize the large fortunes they possessed from crime or corruption.

The whole film is about the character Humberto Brause, a man with ambition, who took advantage of that whole socio-political situation, to become a rich man. We will be spectators of the rise and fall of a man, who was born for that kind of business.

The film also deals with Humberto's family drama, from his first relationship with his boss and father-in-law, the times of love with Gudrun, a woman he loves, and later the collapse of the whole family, which will also be in danger because of the mistakes Humberto will make, when he accepts certain jobs and the corrupt officials of other governments return to recover the fortune he was given.

It has elements of the thriller, with all the corruption and dirty money plot, the help Humberto must ask a criminal in Brazil and everything he must do to get out of trouble. Humberto will learn that nothing in life is free, nor is it easy. Everything, until he becomes in a rich man, has a price that must be paid.

His personal life, the woman he loves and his children are the most precious thing to Humberto, but his ambition will make him neglect his personal life, and his health will also be affected. It is when the most personal drama is present in the whole story, and it is the way in which business decisions affect the intimate life of the protagonist that I find most attractive.

The story is complemented by moments of black humor, which I found funny, but at the same time, the whole mix of genres is what left a bittersweet taste in my mouth, because although I liked the film, I feel that it is not totally solid in the story and that all that sociopolitical environment of the time in which it is set, could have been better used, to make a more scathing criticism of those times.

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I have to highlight the work of the main actors.

Daniel Hendler plays Humberto Brause, the man who, blinded by ambition, crossed moral and legal boundaries to become a rich man. The actor is from Uruguay, but has made his entire professional career in Argentina, where he has worked in some spooky and TV shows. He does excellent acting and is the main character of the whole story.

Dolores Fonzi plays Gudrun, the woman who falls in love with Humberto and then goes through some stormy moments in the relationship. Fonzi is an excellent Argentinean actress, whom I have seen in other films in which she has always stood out in her roles. She became known by working in soap operas in her country, but has had a long career in film. She received a lot of praise for the film Paulina, an intense film where she plays a teacher who is raped by some students. It is a very intense film and I recommend it to her, because she makes a masterful performance.

The Chilean actor Benjamín Vicuña, whom I recently saw in the film Pacto de Fuga, also participates in this film, playing Javier Bonpland. Vicuña is a great actor from Chile, which is common to see him acting in different countries. He was one of the stars of the successful HBO Latin America series Profugos. And the actor Luis Machin plays Mr. Schweinsteiger

The Uruguayan film is a co-production with Argentina and Germany, with a script written by the same filmmaker Federico Veiroj together with Arauco Hernández Holz, Martín Mauregui.

The film is based on the novel of the same title, written by Juan Enrique Gruber, who was born in Warsaw in the early 1920s and came to Uruguay during the years of World War II. For most of his life he dedicated himself to being an entrepreneur, with considerable success, and then, after retiring from the business world, he began to pursue his great passion: writing. He published the novel Asi Hablo El Cambista in 1979 and it was a successful book, because it reflected a society that he came to know very well, and all the political and economic events that he lived through.

Trailer - English subtitles

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