Hermia & Helena
54th New York Film Festival
September 30 - 11, 2016
On an artist residency in New York, where she’s working on a Spanish translation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Camila (Agustina Muñoz) finds herself within a constellation of constantly shifting relationships. The precise gestures and mercurial moods of Matias Piñeiro’s other work are in evidence here, along with an emotional depth that makes this his richest and most mature film.
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Shooting outside his native Argentina for the first time, New York–based Matias Piñeiro fashions a bittersweet comedy of coupling and uncoupling that doubles as a love letter to his adopted city. Working on a Spanish translation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream during an artist residency, Camila (Agustina Muñoz) finds herself within a constellation of shifting relationships (an old flame, a new one, a long-lost relative). Mingling actors from the director’s Buenos Aires repertory with stalwarts of New York’s independent film scene (Keith Poulson, Dustin Guy Defa, Dan Sallitt), Hermia & Helena offers the precise gestures, mercurial moods, and youthful energies of all Piñeiro’s cinema, with an emotional depth and directness that make this his most mature work yet.
Piñeiro’s quiet virtuosity, which binds the movie’s relentless energy
to intimate discoveries, is giddily thrilling.—Richard Brody, The New Yorker
Much of what’s enrapturing about this deceptive wisp of a film is contained in this gentle flourish.
—Tim Grierson, Paste Magazine
The film is delightful in ways that are deeply if obscurely deliberate.
—Vadim Rizov, Filmmaker Magazine
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