After the extraordinary success of Juan Moreira (1973) and Nazareno Cruz y el lobo (1975), films in which the combination of legend, history and folklore was aestheticized to be like traditional popular theater prior to television, Leonardo Favio courageously – for some thoughtlessly – embarked on a project that was unacceptable to those who had proclaimed the success of his previous movies. The fact that the filmmaker who had debuted in the 1960s with amazing works like Crónica de un niño solo and El romance del Aniceto y la Francisca gambled on this picture attests to the power of his personality and his dislike of conventions.
To make this tender and ironic road movie about two losers, Favio chose two actors in contrast with their public image: the world champion boxer Carlos Monzón for the part of a naive small-towner who dreams of glory as an artist faraway, and the protest singer Gian Franco Pagliaro, a Neapolitan who moved to Argentina, as the swindler who talks of a bright future to Monzón’s character (“you look like Charles Bronson”) only to drag him into a miserable scam. Before ending up in jail, where they finally find an audience that understands their art, it is part a sad and ironic story of manipulation and part a tale of hidden love, as only can be experienced in a context where homosexuality is forbidden. The swindler looks for a certain Carmen (sic), a dwarf he sold to a travelling circus, to help get them out of trouble; when he refuses to help, Pagliaro yells out the line remembered by fans of the film: “I hope you grow so you die of hunger”.
Released right after the military coup of 1976, this movie was ignored and would have to wait twenty years to acquire a cult following.