Agustín Mango 
The movie Un buen día premiered in 2010 and lasted only one week in theaters. Critics slammed it and considered it, hands down, the worst movie in Argentine film history. Years later, however, a group of fervent fans rescued it from oblivion, turning it into a cult movie and a seminal part of Argentina’s pop culture.
If you’ve never seen it, you’re in luck, as three Buenos Aires art-house film venues will be honoring the biggest blunder in Argentine film production all through June. You also have the chance to check out a documentary about the film and its fandom that is driving the current revival: Después de un buen día, crafted by Néstor Frenkel, one of the best local directors of the genre.
The Buenos Aires Museum of Latin American Art is screening both the film and the documentary, while the San Martin Cultural Center is playing the film together with a retrospective of Nestor Frenkel’s work. The cinephile cherry on top is the special 35mm film screening of Un buen día at the Buenos Aires Film Museum, with one single show on Saturday, June 15 at 6 p.m.
A love story in the — very distant — manner of Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy, the film features a man and a woman, two Argentines in Los Angeles, who meet by chance at a cafe and spend a whole day together. It’s a simple starting point, and yet we’re not exaggerating: it is that bad.
Un buen día feels like a star alignment of failed components: completely off-key performances by actors Lucila Solá and Anibal Silveyra, a pompous and nonsense script, and some very rudimentary direction, cinematography, and production design. A full wreckage from the very first minute. But, as it usually happens with all-out disasters, you simply can’t take your eyes off it.
Written and produced by Enrique Torres, an eclectic cultural journalist and successful TV writer in the 1980s and 1990s, the film was directed by soap-opera director Nicolás del Boca, who was his father-in-law. Nicolás, who was also the father of TV superstar Andrea del Boca, was 82 at the time and had never directed a film before.
The film was a massive failure at the box office and quickly went into oblivion. Yet the actual story of Un buen día occurred afterwards, as it progressively turned into what all the best honest-mistakes become: a cult classic.
The film’s fandom started to expand online and sprout social media communities. It later evolved into appreciation clubs, reaction videos, fan-made versions, and major watch parties, in the way of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. People just couldn’t stop watching it, in a mixture of guilty pleasure, ironic consumption, and true love.
The day after a good day
Ten years later, documentary filmmaker Néstor Frenkel — a sharp observer of social and cultural phenomena that occur on the border between the ridiculous and the adventurous — tracked down the history and people behind the original film. But Frenkel also traces a path to connect Torres’ spirit with the film’s current fandom, an urban tribe of devotees who formed a beautiful and delirious cult around it.
A luminous and joyous depiction of passionate people, Después de un buen día is mostly driven by Enrique Torres’ magnetic personality — he is in charge of describing the making of the original film — and testimonies from the film’s crew and talent, as well as critics and fans. A special mention should be made about the flamboyantly charismatic Anibal Sylveira, the film’s lead actor, who pours his heart out in the documentary and yet still feels like a true-life character right out of a Christopher Guest mockumentary.
A thorough and good-hearted description of Enrique Torres’ journey as he discovers the huge fandom around his biggest failure, Después de un buen día is also a film about something that only those things that provoke true love can get: a second chance.
San Martin Cultural Center – Sala Manuel Antín
Después de un buen día + Néstor Frenkel Retrospective
Saturdays – 10 p.m.
Paraná 310
MALBA
Un buen día
Fridays – 8 p.m.
Después de un buen día
Fridays – 10 p.m.
Buenos Aires Film Museum
Un buen día in 35 mm
June 15 – 6 p.m.
Tickets are available on a first-come, first-serve basis.
