‘Ramón Vázquez’ Review: Gustavo Fontán Turns A Son’s Long Road Home Into A Quiet Portrait Of Solidarity And Grace

My name is Ramón Vázquez, I’m from La Pampa. I’m on my way to Soto, in Córdoba, to find my father. I haven’t seen him in thirty years.» More or less in those words, that’s how Ramón introduces himself to everyone he meets along the way — anyone who, for one reason or another, ends up talking to him. Usually those conversations start right after Ramón faints, often while staring at the light filtering through the trees, for reasons that are never quite explained. Once people wake him up and try to help, Ramón fills them in: where he’s from, where he’s headed, and not much else. By the end of it, more often than not, they’re the ones doing most of the talking.

Ramón has a placid, unhurried gaze. Played by Marcelo Subiotto, he could pass for the archetypal «man walking with a bag» of Argentine cinema — someone who travels, who crosses paths with people who may or may not get him a little closer to where he’s going, and who listens as they tell him about their lives. He’s in no rush, as he says himself, and he has no idea what he’ll find when he gets there. Maybe the journey is really the point.

A work of fiction, Ramón Vázquez extends the cinematic universe Fontán has built across his other films about lives in transit, especially La Terminal (2024). Ramón and his occasional companions and confidants keep crossing paths at gas stations, small-town bars, roadside grills, bus terminals, and the odd house here and there. They keep each other company, share a little of themselves, say goodbye. Bit by bit, a whole world of solitary, grief-worn people takes shape — people worn down almost chronically by the weight of the world.

Along the way, Ramón faints more than once, dreaming or remembering a place that seems to be his childhood home. It’s a journey of light and shadow, almost ghostly, that keeps seeping into a film built out of conversations and long stretches of Ramón walking from one place to another — while Fontán’s camera, in what’s become almost a signature move, drifts away from his footsteps to linger on the landscape in precise detail: leaves stirring in the wind, sunlight cutting through trees, the concrete of the road, the streets of a small town. Through all of it, Ramón doesn’t so much advance as circulate through the experiences of whoever happens to be his companion at that moment.

Ramón Vázquez plays like the most minimalist possible version of The Odyssey: the journey of a man who, thirty years on, is trying to make it home but keeps getting sidetracked by encounters that delay his arrival. Out of these exchanges emerges a whole world of anguish and worry. The film’s central passage runs through his time with Javier (Luis Ziembrowski), who unloads part of his own existential distress onto him. This man’s expression —and not only his— is that of someone barely holding on to life. And Ramón, with his Christ-like gaze and seemingly lighter burden, absorbs all of it.

Perhaps what matters most in Vázquez’s journey isn’t reaching his father but soaking up the world along the way: the people, the places, the houses, the sensations, the emotions. At one point, all of that weight builds up and he can’t help but let a few tears fall. Minutes later, someone hands him a tissue to wipe them away, tells him a story, gives him a hug. And that’s the odyssey of Ramón Vázquez: a journey into pain and anguish, but also into empathy and solidarity.