Capsule Reviews of Today’s AFI Film Fest

Following are capsule reviews of today’s screenings in the American Film Institute Los Angeles International Film Festival at the Cineplex Odeon Century Plaza Cinemas:

‘The Absent’

Argentina, 1988, 85 minutes

6:20 p.m.

Argentine director Rafael Filippelli’s look at the days before his country’s 1976 coup d’etat operates on a classic movie “clock”--that is, the shift in power that will lead (we’re told at the beginning of the film) to the “disappearance” of its union leader protagonist. This film’s doomed agitators of the left seem oddly passionless outside of their politics (a last-minute love affair is more like a last meal for the condemned), which might be part of Filippelli’s point but is a sticking point for involvement in his characters’ inevitable fate.