Lost Embrace

Lost Embrace stars Daniel Hendler (Winner 2004 Berlin Film Festival/Best Actor) as Ariel, a recent college dropout with hopes of escaping a career behind the counter of his mother's lingerie store in a Buenos Aires shopping mall. The job does come with its perks, as tantalizing as helping beautiful women slip in and out of lingerie can be, but the tales of the shopkeepers have grown stale; dressing-room trysts with Rita can't go on forever; and Estela, his now pregnant exgirlfriend, no longer needs him. It could grow into a comfortable routine, but with a passport to world travel and new adventures at his fingertips, Ariel seeks a life of greater aspirations.

And Ariel can almost taste it. With a little “help” from Roman Polanski, Copernicus and John Paul I, his Polish passport will arrive soon enough, and the eccentric spirit of the mall and its shopkeepers will fade into memory. Will he miss the Saliganis, a large Italian family that runs an electronics store and beauty salon — at the top of their lungs, or the fabric-selling Levin Brothers (really cousins)? He barely knows the newly wedded Kims, but their feng-shui shop should fit in nicely. As for Osvaldo, he’s about to lose his stationery store, though not before Ariel learns a long-held secret from his past. Ariel’s certain to miss his best friend, Mitelman and his stunning Lithuanian secretary, and he can’t forget sexy Rita, the vixen of the Internet café who likes to model lingerie. Of course, long after Ariel departs, Joseph, his older brother, will still be settling scores from an office above the mall, and their mother, Sonia, will continue to run the lingerie shop. But before Ariel’s dream of a new life in Europe can begin, he will first have to shake a head-spinning dose of reality: his long-lost father is about to return.



Ariel's father, Elias, left Argentina to fight in the Yom Kippur War but never returned to his family. Growing up, Ariel had heard stories about his father, both at home and from older shopkeepers at the mall, but the mystery of why Elias left the family shortly after Ariel was born, why he never returned, and why this seems to have left Ariel's mother and brother indifferent, has always bothered him. If the truth is to emerge, Ariel must stop running from Elias, allow his father to share his story, which includes old secrets about the mall and its shopkeepers, and, ultimately, accept a long-overdue embrace that has been lost to him for so long. A story of a first, bittersweet encounter between a father and his young adult son, Lost Embrace (Argentina's 2004 Academy Award entry/Best Foreign Film) conjures up an ensemble of engaging characters who pursue their humble dreams with gentle humor, irresistible passion and an infectious generosity of spirit. -- © New Yorker Films