‘Glaxo’ Toronto Review: A Coming-of-Age Story Haunted by Argentina’s Violent Past

This adaptation of Hernán Ronsino’s 2009 novel Glaxo reconstructs a literary work that is far more elliptical in its portrayal of four lifelong friends from Chivilcoy, a small town in Argentina’s Buenos Aires Province. Their intertwined lives are upended by the arrival of a former police officer with a dark past and his wife. Moving back and forth between 1957 and 1984 —with a crucial prologue set in 1956 that establishes the film’s political framework— Benjamín Naishtat continues his exploration of an Argentina profoundly shaped, and privately scarred, by military rule and by the corporations that collaborated with it.

The story begins in a movie theater in Chivilcoy in 1984. Vardemann (Esteban Bigliardi) and «Bicho» Souza (Alan Sabbagh), childhood friends who have not seen each other in years, attend a screening of The Terminator. Vardemann is visibly uneasy, reluctant to be recognized around town, and it soon becomes apparent that he has spent years in prison. Through a series of flashbacks —which repeatedly return to this present-day frame— we gradually learn the history of the two men and their two closest friends, who formed an inseparable group as teenagers in the late 1950s.

The quartet is completed by «Miguelito» Barrios (Manu Fanego, as an adult) and Lucas (Esteban Lamothe). In 1957 they are ordinary adolescents whose lives revolve around village dances, first romances, and adolescent longing. At the center of all their attention is «La Negra» Miranda (Lali Espósito), a young woman whose confidence, beauty, and irreverent charm captivate them all. But pursuing her comes with a serious complication: she is married to Ramón Folcada (Marcelo Subiotto), a former police officer who left Buenos Aires after becoming involved in something sinister and has settled into semi-retirement in the countryside.

The film briefly rewinds to 1956 to reveal what Folcada was involved in, depicting the events surrounding the José León Suárez executions—an infamous episode in which civilians suspected of participating in a failed uprising against Argentina’s military government were illegally detained and executed. The executions, later immortalized in Rodolfo Walsh’s landmark nonfiction book Operation Massacre, establishes the kind of man Folcada truly is. Ironically, the shyest of the four friends, Miguelito, is the one who becomes closest to La Negra after Folcada himself asks him to teach her horseback riding. The relationship transforms Miguelito’s life in more ways than one.

Glaxo is ultimately a film about friendship and about the ways political violence reshapes private relationships. As it moves across decades, it traces not only the bond these young men share in the late 1950s but also the people they become nearly thirty years later. Running quietly beneath their personal story is Glaxo itself, the pharmaceutical factory that dominates the town’s economy. It provides employment and stability while also embodying the compromises and hidden costs of corporate power, an understated but significant force in the protagonists’ lives.

The film also serves as a natural companion to Naishtat’s earlier feature Rojo (released before his co-directed Puan with María Alché). Like that film, Glaxo examines the lingering effects of dictatorship and political violence on Argentina’s provincial towns, exploring how ordinary middle-class citizens become complicit with authoritarian power through fear, convenience, or quiet accommodation. It is another study of the uneasy alliance between civilian society, business interests, and the military—an alliance that has echoed across different periods of Argentine history and continues today.

Stylistically, Glaxo embraces the aesthetics of a lush period melodrama. Its performances and staging evoke classic Argentine cinema —especially the films of Leonardo Favio, whose influence is unmistakable in the dance sequences that recall The Romance of Aniceto and Francisca. A superb ensemble cast is led by Lali Espósito, whose magnetic presence makes her the object of every male character’s desire. Yet the emotional center of the drama remains Folcada, a man shaped by political violence who manipulates the younger generation and steadily poisons the relationships between them.

Much like Rojo, Glaxo combines elegant, subtly stylized visuals —beautifully photographed by Brazilian cinematographer Pedro Sotero (Bacurau, Aquarius)— with a fundamentally tragic coming-of-age story, reminiscent of Once Upon a Time in America. Beneath its intimate drama lies a broader portrait of Argentina in the aftermath of Juan Perón’s overthrow in the 1955 military coup, a historical rupture that quietly frames everything that follows.

Although Glaxo keeps its political and corporate machinations largely in the background, they are essential to understanding the narrative. The opening scenes depicting the arrest and execution of political dissidents in 1956 mark the beginning of a cycle of repression and violence that would eventually culminate in the guerrilla conflicts of the 1970s and the military dictatorship that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983. Naishtat never underlines these historical parallels —they may even prove somewhat opaque for viewers unfamiliar with Argentine history— but the thematic connection between national events and the intimate tragedy unfolding in Chivilcoy remains unmistakable.

At times, Glaxo can feel overly solemn, and its deliberately measured pacing occasionally slows the march toward a conclusion that seems inevitable from early on. Shigeru Umebayashi’s score —the renowned composer best known for his collaborations with Wong Kar-wai— adds an overtly melodramatic register that sometimes works against the film’s underlying political urgency. Yet within the emotional logic of the story it proves remarkably effective, as time, romance, nostalgia, friendship, and betrayal continually blur together. Glaxo is all of those things at once, but above all it is a moving account of how political, military, and corporate power can devastate the lives of four friends who, at the outset, wanted nothing more than to learn how to ask the prettiest girl at the party to dance.