FILMEX REVIEWS

Following is a partial look at films screening today at Mann’s Westwood Triplex. ‘PEDRO AND THE CAPTAIN’ Mexico, 1984, 137 minutes 12:15 p.m. and 7:15 p.m.

In the first half-hour of Juan E. Garcia’s brutally grueling film of Mario Bendetti’s two-character play, actor Humbert Ribeiro displays superbly the diabolical powers of persuasion of a military interrogator in an unnamed Latin American country as he torments his hooded, silent political prisoner (Ruben Yanez). Therefore, it’s incredible that he would then allow his prisoner to turn the tables on him psychologically, allowing Yanez to convince him ultimately that he, Ribeiro, is in effect as surely a dead man as his captive soon will be. You can believe that “Pedro and the Captain” could be potent theater, but this film is an instance of the camera undermining the conventions of the stage.

‘THE TROUBLE WITH LOVE’ West Germany, 1983, 117 minutes 12:45 p.m. and 7:45 p.m.

Actress-director Helke Sander, who explored the psychological impact of living with the Berlin Wall in her excellent “Redupers,” has now created a rueful romantic comedy in which a mature woman (played by Sander herself) struggles against her helplessness in her love for a prison doctor (Lou Castel) who’s as amoral in his relationships with women as he is principled in his fight for the rights of political prisoners. This is a refreshingly adult, quirky and demanding film in which a bright, reflective woman attempts to reconcile the contradictions, injustices and absurdities that confound every thinking person living in any society; to label this a feminist work is to restrict its meaning. RECOMMENDED.