Here is a very decent slab of social realism from Columbia that, though beautifully acted throughout, never quite finds its focus. Eric (Bryan Santamaria), a charismatic 10-year-old, is sent to live with his mildly useless handyman father (Carlos Fernando Perez) in Bogota. They get on well enough. They are both fond of Eric’s dog, Lupa. Every now and then the older man spends a little too long in the pub, but the tensions never seem insurmountable.
Life starts to swivel when one of dad’s wealthier employers, Maria Isabel (Alejandra Borrero), takes an interest in the two and invites them to spend Christmas in her country estate. The proud worker bristles at the suggestion of charity, but demurs when Maria Isabel implies that the boy might like to remain in the upper-class home.
Franco Lolli, making his feature debut, is to be commended for making no brash generalisations based on class. When Maria Isabel discovers Eric stealing from her purse she reacts with commendable compassion. Eric’s dad is neither a flawless salt-of-the- earth type nor a useless wastrel. There is a sense that the social structures – rather than those caught within them – are to blame for the apparently unbridgeable divisions.
It's a shame that the film can't settle on a story. For a while it looks as if, in imitation of Bicycle Thieves, it will concern a search for the missing Lupa, but that strand soon resolves itself. The trauma over Eric's pilfering is dismissed in a scene. Hostilities never fully break out between Eric and the more well-heeled kids.
Indeed, Gente de Bien does not properly grip until a final scene that – though depicting a small sadness in the great scheme of things – inflicts ruthless narrative sadism on the audience. That is meant as backhanded compliment.
