Funny Dirty Little War

Funny Dirty Little War (Spanish: No habrá más penas ni olvido; original title translatable as "There will be no more sorrow or forgetfulness", a line from Mi Buenos Aires Querido tango lyrics) is a 1983 Argentine comedy-drama film directed by Héctor Olivera, written by Olivera and Roberto Cossa, based on a novel of the same name by Osvaldo Soriano.

It was produced by Fernando Ayala and Luis O. Repetto, and stars Federico Luppi, Miguel Ángel Solá, Ulises Dumont, Héctor Bidonde and Víctor Laplace.

During the early 1970s, Ricardo Guglielmini is the mayor of Colonia Vela, a small country village in an undisclosed province of central Argentina.

He plots with Héctor Suprino, a local Peronist spin doctor, and Reinaldo, a union leader, to get the town's deputy mayor, Ignacio Fuentes, kicked out of office, due to his increasing popularity, which threatens Guglilemini's decades-long hold on the mayorship.

Taking advantage of this, Guglilemini publicly accuses Fuentes of aiding communist guerillas as an excuse to fire him or get him to resign.

As night falls, a group of delusional local Montoneros, led by Matilda Gómez, gather in an abandoned warehouse and make a completely unrealistic and blatantly flawed plan to use the conflict as a means to start a civil war in Argentina, take over the government and convert the country into a communist state.

Rodrigo and Crazy Ceres are killed during this attack and Fuentes, García and Mateo are barely saved because Cerviño arrives in the nick of time and sprays pesticides all over the police with his plane, causing them to temporarily disperse.

In order to buy some time and distract Rossi, Mateo turns himself in while Fuentes, García and Juan prepare a bomb with the explosives the latter had previously brought in.

While leaving town, Suprino realizes Guglielmini plans to frame him for inciting the whole incident, so he runs him over with his truck before escaping.

Though Funny Dirty Little War ends bleakly, the existence of the film itself - the fact that it could be made at all, and with such style - is ultimately invigorating.