’27 Nights’ San Sebastian Review: Marilú Marini Shines in a Tender Dramedy About Age, Art and Freedom (Netflix)

Who decides what is appropriate at one age or another? Who really knows which behaviors are right or wrong, acceptable or unacceptable? The story told in 27 Nights is based on a real case—the life of visual artist Natalia Kohen, as recounted in Natalia Zito’s nonfiction book—but it could just as easily happen to many others. Maybe not in quite the same peculiar way, but with the same logic and tensions it stirs up. And the question circles back to the same place: who gets to determine how old age should be lived?

Martha Hoffman (played by the extraordinary Marilú Marini) is a woman of the arts, a patron, a wealthy widow who has chosen to fund the projects of younger artists with her own money. Some may think that many of these artists—whether or not their work is truly relevant—are “using” her, taking advantage of an eighty-something woman who, as one lawyer puts it, “may not have all her ducks in a row,” and is handing over a large portion of her fortune.

That suspicion is strongest in her two daughters, played by Carla Peterson and Paula Grinszpan. They fear not only for their inheritance but also, perhaps, for their mother’s mental stability. Convinced that she is no longer capable of making decisions for herself, they attempt to have her declared legally insane, a victim of frontotemporal dementia. The movie opens with them arriving at her house, backed by a team of nurses, prepared to remove her by force if necessary. They succeed, and Martha is institutionalized.

From there, 27 Nights unfolds in two timeframes: the period of her confinement, and what follows after she is released from the psychiatric hospital. Back at home, she receives a visit from Casares, a court-appointed expert played by Daniel Hendler. His task is to assess whether she is, in legal and medical terms, “insane.” The interviews between Casares and Martha, conducted in her luxurious living room, form the narrative core of the film. Their conversations are marked by contrast: Martha is extroverted, uninhibited, unapologetic about her sexuality (the sculptures that decorate her house make that clear enough), and marked by a life lived abroad, especially in Europe, with a degree of “libertine” freedom. Casares, by contrast, is a withdrawn bureaucrat, cautious to the point of passivity, a man who seems to have lost any spark of passion. He still lives with his father, rarely socializes, and drifts through his professional duties without enthusiasm.

This opposition sets up a dynamic familiar in cinema: the encounter between two radically different individuals whose lives are altered by one another. And indeed, on one level, 27 Nights is about that transformation. But Hendler, directing here with remarkable assurance, avoids easy clichés. Instead, he crafts a dramedy that balances lightness with depth, using humor and warmth to approach weighty subjects. The film addresses the challenges of aging, yes, but also the role of money in a society where wealth is often considered something to be preserved rather than used. Martha’s daughters and their lawyers are most concerned with preventing her from “wasting” her inheritance on artists of questionable merit (a group embodied by performances from Humberto Tortonese, Julián Tello, Jimena Anganuzzi and many others). Yet the film’s intelligence lies in suggesting another possibility: that Martha is indeed giving her money away freely, but not out of confusion or illness—rather as a deliberate, lucid decision about how she wants to live her final years.

The contrast between Hendler’s character and Marini’s is at the heart of the film. Casares is not particularly obsessed with money; his problem is that he seems to have lost all spark, any real interest in life beyond his often tedious work cases. At court he meets a colleague (Julieta Zylberberg) who clearly attracts him, though he has no idea how to connect with her. The lessons—sometimes outrageous, sometimes deeply poignant—that Martha offers him may be what he needs to break free from his emotional paralysis.

The film is deliberately old-fashioned, a broad-spectrum dramedy designed to entertain and move an older audience, the kind often left out by Argentine indie comedies. Yet Hendler—just as in his other films, including the recent A Loose End—works in a unique territory, blending that dry, contemporary comedy style with more classical traditions that more mature audiences can easily connect with. 27 Nights moves from Brazilian ballads to Pixies songs, sprinkles in moments of absurd humor, and also takes aim, with disarming sensitivity, at deeply emotional truths. It’s hard to imagine many viewers leaving the theater without shedding a tear or two.

Beyond the strong ensemble cast and a script that cleverly sidesteps many of the clichés of this subgenre, it’s Marilú Marini’s performance that lifts the film to another level, both comically and emotionally. Martha may appear frivolous, vain, even a bit eccentric, but Marini always finds a way to convey the depth of what her character is experiencing without ever resorting to cheap sentiment or overacting. She conveys every shift of mood, every hidden vulnerability, with subtlety and restraint. In the film’s most emotional moments, she resists the temptation of melodrama, instead allowing the camera to linger on her face, to capture the way her eyes fill with tears, or the way her voice trembles just slightly. Through her performance, we come to understand that beneath the extravagant surface lies a woman who simply wants to live what may be the last years of her life however she pleases. There’s a harsher way to put it, but I’ll leave that to you…