The Substitute Review: The Substitute (El Suplente) is an Argentinian crime-drama film directed by Diego Lerman, written by Lerman, María Meira and Luciana De Mello and stars Juan Minujín, Alfredo Castro, Bárbara Lennie, Rita Cortese and Lucas Arrua. The film has a runtime of 112 minutes.
– The Substitute Review Does Not Contain Spoilers –
The film follows Juan, a poet and critic, who joins a tough inner-city school as a substitute teacher and pretty soon gets sucked into the drug world when one of his students is caught with drugs. As he desperately tries to save them, he also starts to find meaning in his own life.
There’s also the power struggle between the drug kingpin of the town El Perro and his fight with the mayor and Julio’s father, Roberto, also named El Chileno – it’s election season, and both have political ambitions. Thus, the drug issue in the school presents the perfect opportunity for a plain-old political feud.
The Substitute is a slow-paced movie that really breaks down a teacher’s relationship with his students, his relationship with his work and what it means to have meaning in life. After going through a divorce and with a daughter who is at the age of acting out, Lucio seems to be having a tough time with the changes in his life. Plus, the general decline of people’s interest in poetry and literary arts is also a sore spot for Lucio.
Lucio is a compassionate character whose intentions are noble. However, the way he is portrayed sometimes comes off as superficial and a way for him to have meaning and reason in his own life. Either way, the film does try to touch on some deep and important points in its storyline and describe the difficult lives that everyone has to traverse in their everyday lives.
The movie is about Julio as well as the students but apart from some moments of genuine concern and thrill, there’s not much to hold our attention in The Substitute. There are a lot of things happening together, but nothing is impactful enough for the story to stay with us till the end. The sons want to lie up to their fathers’ names, the politicians get into feuds for power, and the students suffer thanks to all this mess.
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It is also a story as old as time – we have seen similar situations and characters too many times, and The Substitute doesn’t offer anything too unique. You do feel bad for Lucio at some points and care about the kids’ future at others, but overall, the movie is quite mellow and underwhelming, spanning over unnecessary things for too much of the runtime instead of focusing on more pressing issues that we’d like to know more about.
The political feud is also not expanded on enough, and it comes up very conveniently from time to time. However, we don’t go deep into it at all. Because of this, we miss out on the thrill and intrigue of the political angle of Dilan and Lucio’s issues, and ultimately, it ends up feeling empty and half-baked.
However, I enjoyed The Substitute‘s ability to give us a beautiful arc to Lucio’s classroom that goes from being uninterested teenagers to caring about the class, the education and the teacher. It’s interesting to watch Lucio struggle and eventually form a connection with his students, and I think it would’ve been wonderful to watch this angle more than to focus on the drug part. It’s heartening and also imparts a lot of hope, and personally, we don’t see it play out enough.
The Substitute Review: Final Thoughts
Diego Lerman’s film fails to make an impact with the crime/thriller aspects of it, but as a drama film in the classroom, I quite enjoyed it. I see the struggle and the disinterest transform into love and respect for the work and the art, and I would’ve really enjoyed seeing the process of it instead of focusing on a half-baked gang violence story that doesn’t go anywhere.
The Substitute is streaming on Netflix.
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