La vuelta al nido (English: Return to the Nest) is a 1938 Argentine psychological drama film written and directed by Leopoldo Torres Ríos and starring José Gola and Amelia Bence. It was the first major work of Torres Ríos and the first production of Estudios E.F.A. (Establecimientos Filmadores Argentinos), founded by producers Adolfo Z. Wilson and Julio Joly in partnership with exhibitor Clemente Lococo. However, the film remained shelved for nine months due to rejection by exhibitors and critics who deemed it "uncommercial," and E.F.A. even released Adiós Buenos Aires—also directed by Torres Ríos and filmed later—before La vuelta al nido. Unlike the more commercially successful films that dominated the early years of the Golden Age of Argentine cinema, La vuelta al nido was distinguished by its poetic and intimate style, focusing on the psychology of its characters over action or dialogue.
After several months of difficulties and debates about its commercial value, the film finally premiered on 4 May 1938 at the Cine Monumental in Buenos Aires. It was a resounding commercial and critical failure due to its slow pace, with the notable exception of the influential critic Calki of El Mundo, whose backing proved fundamental to the film's eventual release and who devoted several columns to praising it as the inauguration of a new style within Argentine cinema. Torres Ríos was accused of "dirtying the celluloid" and took the failure very badly; the blow affected his reputation for a couple of years, and the films he made in the following period were markedly commercial in style.
The film began to be reassessed in the 1950s and 1960s, championed by the young critics of the Cine Club Núcleo and the journal Tiempo de Cine, who recognized it as a precursor of the cinema of the so-called "generation of the '60s". Today it is recognized as a classic of Argentine cinema, the masterpiece of Torres Ríos, and a film ahead of its time, with an experimental style that anticipates auteur cinema and cinematic modernity. It has been considered one of the greatest Argentine films of all time on several occasions.
Plot
Enrique Núñez, a middle-class man from Buenos Aires, strolls with his young children in the park and the Buenos Aires Zoo, where they observe the caged animals. Back home, he bathes his son while his wife puts the girl to bed. Enrique is attentive and affectionate as a father, but treats his wife harshly: he scolds her for leaving doors open, for not keeping things in their proper place, for forgetting the pot on the stove, and for an alleged lack of discipline with the children. His wife, by contrast, is patient and loving, and the children, well-mannered, pray aloud before sleeping. The couple also has a minor argument in which Enrique celebrates his son's interest in football and dismisses his wife's concern about the boy's academic neglect, arguing that reading weakens the muscles.
After dinner, with the children in bed, Enrique sits down to listen to music and read the newspaper. His wife combs her hair, tidies herself up, and approaches him seeking attention: she sits on his lap, shares in the reading, caresses him, and kisses his neck. Enrique, initially indifferent, eventually smiles and kisses her back. She tells him that when they were courting he did not read so much, to which he replies that newspapers were less interesting back then, before abruptly breaking off the conversation when he thinks he hears one of the children coughing. Returning to his seat, Enrique looks at their wedding photograph and recalls the date of their marriage and the happy moments the couple once shared. His wife sews in silence while he watches her with unease. A shot shows him kneeling sorrowfully before the bed, resting his head on the mattress, which she strokes.
Following images of the Canto al Trabajo (Song to Labour) monument by Rogelio Yrurtia—depicting chained figures dragging a stone—Enrique is seen at his job as an accountant. He works quietly and absently while his more undisciplined colleagues chat and argue about the lottery. His boss points out that he has been making mistakes and threatens more severe measures if it continues. Enrique maintains a cordial relationship with his office colleague Luisita, sweet and attentive, and agrees to buy a pair of shoes for his wife during the break, since she and Luisita share the same shoe size.
His boss calls him in to deliver a letter that has arrived in his name, despite employees being forbidden to receive correspondence at that address. It is an anonymous note informing him that his wife is being unfaithful and that every afternoon, while taking the children to the park, she meets a lover. Enrique falls into a state of profound anguish that follows him home as he watches his wife. In the newspaper he reads about a man who kills his wife in a fit of jealous rage. He approaches her, embraces and kisses her, but cannot conceal his horror.
At a nightclub, he drinks in silence while people dance. There he runs into an old friend, Juan, and catches up with him. Juan asks whether he has married, and Enrique returns the question by asking whether Juan is still a bachelor. Juan admits that most of his conquests are married women and fears that if he marries he will end up with such a woman himself; though he acknowledges that he sometimes longs for the stability of Enrique's domestic life. Enrique's anguish intensifies as the venue plays a tango about heartbreak and disillusionment. Amid his desolation, a woman approaches and tries to attract his attention with a smile. Meanwhile, his wife sleeps alone at home, beside the empty space in the bed.
At work, Enrique is withdrawn and distracted. His boss reproaches him again for his inattentiveness and new errors. At his limit, Enrique tells him he is bent on tormenting him and will not tolerate his bullying, threatening to break his nose. Although Luisita approaches to congratulate him, he leaves the office in silence. His colleagues, who also dislike the boss, jokingly discuss whether he will decide to fire Enrique, noting that he has two children and has been in that thankless job for ten years.
Enrique goes to the park and spies from behind a tree as his wife strolls with the children. In a daydream, he imagines newspaper headlines announcing that he has murdered her in a public park; he sees himself imprisoned and visited by Luisita, who looks after his children and tells him how they are doing: the younger one has taken an interest in studying and wants to become a doctor. Enrique laments that, by the time he leaves prison, his son will already be a grown man and that he will never be able to recover their bond. The daydream ends with him, aged and bearded, just released, returning home to find an adult son who looks at him with cold rejection, before wandering alone in the street.
Back in reality, Enrique remains behind the tree with a revolver in his hand. He then observes that his wife is not meeting any man, and she leaves the park with the children. That night, after putting the children to bed, she approaches him and, moved by his anguish, confesses that she was the one who sent the anonymous letter: she wrote it to get his attention, overwhelmed by the indifference with which he faces the pressures of daily life. Enrique smiles, his anguish lifts, and he embraces and kisses her passionately.
Cast
José Gola as Enrique Amelia Bence as his wife Araceli Fernández as their daughter Mario "Cielito" González as their son Julio Renato as the manager Anita Jordán as Luisita Vicente Forastieri as Pedro Mario Mario as an employee Pascual Pellicciotta]] as Juan Ernesto Villegas as an employee Roberto F. Torres as the judge Enrique del Cerro as Dr. Núñez Roberto Páez as the singer
Themes and style
La vuelta al nido is considered an anomaly among the productions of the Golden Age of Argentine cinema for its intimate style and experimentation with film language, in which the mise-en-scène is placed at the service of the characters' emotions rather than the written plot. Several authors have noted that the film contains elements that anticipate cinematic modernity by decades. On a formal level, it has been described as a work that reflects the transition from silent film to sound film. The film shows influences from German silent cinema, particularly the so-called "chamber film" or Kammerspielfilm, and from filmmakers of the silent era such as King Vidor, with references to his film The Crowd (1928). Against the commercial and narrative imperatives governing all Argentine cinema of the period, the film is characterized by its lack of external "action" and its slow pace, reflecting the inner world and psychology of its characters. Torres Ríos himself wrote that he was attempting "to focus on a situation and study it inwardly, taking advantage of everything that the decalogue of the good scriptwriter rejects. Namely: the absence of action and wasting time on superfluous things." The result is a naturalistic film with sparse dialogue that relied heavily on the restrained performances of José Gola and Amelia Bence, on meticulous attention to apparently insignificant everyday details that carry symbolic and emotional weight, and on the use of long scenes and takes, as well as flashbacks and imagined flash-forwards. According to Puerto Rican academic Paul A. Schroeder Rodríguez, Torres Ríos employs "the use of free indirect style to represent the distorted perspective of his protagonist."
From a formal standpoint, American historian Timothy Barnard highlighted that the film stood apart from the style of the melodramas, musicals, and comedies that dominated the era; a contemporary critic described it as carrying "a whiff of poetry." The film is characterized by a distinctive use of exterior shots, which typically open on treetops or the sky before slowly descending to street-level action, and by the abandonment of shot/reverse shot in favour of long takes that capture all the action or camera movements between two characters in dialogue. Still-life sequences—such as views of the statue in the park—interrupt the narrative line, and the protagonist's daydream was described by Barnard as an "expressionist sequence." Canadian academic Peter H. Rist highlighted the "poetic-realist, long-take style" of the exterior scenes, and noted that Torres Ríos and his brother Carlos Torres Ríos distinguished themselves in location shooting, possibly influenced by the preference of their mentor José A. Ferreyra for filming in the streets.
The film has been described as belonging to the genres of psychological drama, family drama, and melodrama. Its plot is "centred on domestic life and the deterioration that daily routine can produce in love." Several authors have identified it as a portrait of the middle class of Buenos Aires in that era. American researcher John King described it as "almost unique because, unlike other films of the period, it did not turn its gaze towards the streets of Buenos Aires and the rural areas, but instead decided to explore, slowly and meticulously, with great technical complexity, the disintegration of family relationships." The dramatic conflict does not appear until the second half of the film; before that, Torres Ríos devotes himself to exploring the family universe centred on the home.