‘The Man Who Loved UFOs’: San Sebastian Review

Dir. Diego Lerman. Argentina 2024. 107 mins

The truth is out there – but it’s not strictly reliable in extra-terrestrially fanciful media satire The Man Who Loved UFOs. Competing in San Sebastian, the latest feature from Argentinian writer-director Diego Lerman (Suddenly, The Invisible Eye) follows a notorious real-life episode in the career of the late José de Zer, a popular journalist and TV reporter.

 Everything hinges on Sbaraglia’s performance as a likeable if self-serving and faintly sleazy figure

Musing on questions of imagination, reality and the status of truth in the pre-digital media world, this whimsical Netflix dramedy is a distinct departure from the tougher realism of Lerman’s previous film The Substitute. While Argentinian viewers might beam nostalgically at the references, the wider world is likely to respond with a shrug – except for Spain and other territories where lead Leonardo Sbaraglia is a draw.

Argentinian actor Sbaraglia – whose recent European collaborations include Olivier Assayas’s Wasp Network and Almodóvar’s Pain And Glory – appears with bleached hair as de Zer who, when the story begins in 1986, is an entertainment reporter for a Buenos Aires TV channel. He is first seen making a backstage visit to Monica (Monica Ayos), a middle-aged showgirl and chatshow host who is also his occasional lover. He later collapses while filming her – apparently having sighted a mysterious flash in the sky – and experiences a flashback to a vision he received in the Sinai Desert while engaged in the Six Day War.

On waking in hospital, José is approached by a mining company executive who wants him to report on alleged UFO activity in the mountain town of La Candelaria, so as to provide a boost for local tourism. Easily persuaded, José sets off with his faithful cameraman Chango (Sergio Prima) – “Follow me, Chango!” apparently being a catchphrase beloved by all who remember De Zer. 

In La Candelaria, there is scant evidence to suggest anything strange, but José – spurred by an ambivalent mix of visionary enthusiasm and naked appetite for exposure – manages to spin out his skimpy, trumped-up reportage over several weeks, becoming a hero to residents only too happy to be on the map at last. The coverage also enhances his personal profile – he’s even seen sharing a bath of fake plastic bubbles with Monica on her super-tacky TV show – but he faces scepticism from colleagues at his channel, from his ex-wife and from their teenage daughter Marti (a nicely spiky characterisation from the director’s own daughter Renata Lerman). Eventually, hunger for a good story – even if it’s a preposterous one – leads him into danger and finally, it’s suggested in an altogether loopy climax, some sort of transcendental redemption. 

Shot in widescreen with expressionistic touches of distortion at edge of frame, the film has undeniable sweep in its landscape imagery, capturing the mountainous territory of Argentina’s Córdoba province. It also judiciously downplays the visual references to 80s technology and fashion, so often exaggerated in period movies. With a surfeit of sketchily-limned supporting characters detracting from the story’s focus, everything hinges on Sbaraglia’s performance as a likeable if self-serving and faintly sleazy figure. The actor adeptly balances the elements of naivety and cynicism – on one hand, a semi-visionary sold on his own myth-making, on the other a huckster in love with his power to persuade. 

Dramatically, however, and in terms of the comic ironies that this story could potentially pack, the film lacks bite, its construction not quite maximising the twists and turns of José’s improbable progress. The ending also directs too cutely gratifying a wink to the viewer – and, lest we think this is all a trumped-up tale, uses the ever-popular device of showing archive footage of De Zer’s actual broadcasts. Throughout, use of fuzzy TV and video textures will please techno-nostalgists yearning for the days before digital smoothness ironed out the crunchier electronic grit.