The River Train

Newcomer Milo Barría is remarkable—serious, inquiring, even a little withholding—as Milo, a 9-year-old from Argentina’s rural provinces who trains day and night at the Malambo under the demanding and disapproving eye of his father. Milo is a prodigy at the gaucho folk dance, with its whipcrack footwork and machismo, but one night, he slips a mickey into the family dinner and heads off by rail for adventures in Buenos Aires. Seeing through his eyes, writer-directors Lorenzo Ferro and Lucas A. Vignale conjure a big city full of small curiosities: a poetry-spouting train engineer, street vendors hawking wind-up toys, and a ravishing experimental theater maker who opens Milo’s eyes to the thrilling flux of identity. At once naturalistic and fanciful, with a sparkle of mischief animating nearly every scene, this debut feature is guided by a rambunctious spirit that exhausts itself only as the end credits roll.