'Glaxo' Review: Naishtat's TIFF Premiere Misses the Mark — SkimNews
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- 'Glaxo' premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival 2026 and is currently seeking U.S. distribution, with the film adapted by writer-director Benjamín Naishtat from Hernán Ronsino's short novel.
- Marcelo Subiotto stars as fascist police officer Ramón Folcada opposite Lali Espósito as his wife "La Negra" Miranda, with Joaquin Bonadeo as teenage Miguelito Barrios, who begins an affair with Miranda while training Folcada's horses in 1957 rural Chivilcoy.
- Naishtat restructures the novel's four-POV, out-of-order narrative into three years filmed in three distinct aspect ratios, opening with two friends watching "The Terminator" as a self-aware nod to the film's time-jumping structure.
- The film was shot in Brazil at the initiative of producer Rodrigo Teixeira and features a florid score by Shigeru Umebayashi, whose "In the Mood for Love"-style romanticism the reviewer says outpaces the picture's actual erotic heat.
- The review credits Naishtat with strong period recreation and standout set pieces—including a scene where Subiotto's Folcada harasses two Mormon missionaries—but finds the adaptation "never quite fires" because it untangles the book's final-sentence betrayal reveal and lightens the tone, removing any sense of rising stakes.
- Naishtat's track record frames the disappointment: after arthouse debuts "History of Fear" (2014) and "The Movement" (2015), he reached wider audiences with "Rojo" (2018) and "Puan" (2023), and the reviewer argues his instinct to adapt esoteric formalist source material into populist cinema remains rare and worth encouraging despite this film's shortcomings.
Why it matters: For distributors weighing acquisition bids, the TIFF premiere carries a split verdict: the reviewer praises Naishtat's craft and the film's showcase qualities—Subiotto's menacing lead turn, the '50s production design, the Mormons scene—while flagging that the adaptation loses the novel's narrative withholding, leaving a polished but underpowered period drama looking for a U.S. home.
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