Los que ligan

Los que ligan unfurls a vibrant, albeit melancholic, animated chronicle of Don Feliciano, a corpulent, perpetually hopeful bachelor navigating the labyrinthine social currents of 1919 Buenos Aires. Cristiani's pioneering hand meticulously crafts a world teeming with the city's burgeoning modernity and its attendant absurdities, where Feliciano, a man seemingly born out of time, endeavors to secure a romantic entanglement. His odyssey is a series of exquisitely rendered misadventures: from his clumsy attempts at café courtship, punctuated by spilled beverages and mortifying faux pas, to his misguided reliance on a charlatan 'love guru' whose advice inevitably culminates in disaster. We witness his futile efforts to impress at opulent dance halls, where his two left feet become a comedic ballet of societal rejection, and his grand romantic gestures are consistently overshadowed by the more flamboyant, yet superficial, advances of his younger, smoother rivals. The film masterfully satirizes the era's evolving gender dynamics and the performative rituals of attraction, portraying Feliciano's earnest, if bumbling, quest for genuine connection against a backdrop of increasingly superficial societal expectations. His journey, however, culminates not in a conventional triumph of romantic conquest, but in a subtle, poignant recognition of self-worth and the quiet dignity of authentic desire, perhaps finding solace in an unexpected, less ostentatious companionship, thus subtly subverting the very 'ligar' culture it so deftly lampoons.