Back at the Estancia

I got so caught up in the financial complications of this one that I didn’t pay full attention to the more important parts, namely the romance, the scenery, and our heroine Abril’s Boston/career v. Argentina/man dilemma.

Abril, Julie Gonzalo, is a business consultant whose reputation in the industry was ruined by almost driving a multi-billion dollar company into bankruptcy. She’s actually famous as a cautionary tale and is unemployable in her field. When her cousin calls her from Argentina, she tells her she has gotten an offer to buy their ranch they inherited from their grandparents. Belinda is tired of trying to run it on her own and wants to pursue her dream of owning a restaurant.  Abril prefers to have the ranch in her hip pocket as a possible vacation or retirement home, even though she hasn’t visited in years and years since she was 18.  She hotfoots it to Argentina to see if there is a way to keep the ranch and still allow Belinda to achieve her restaurant dream. If she can work some financial wizardry, maybe she can punch up her resume and get a job again. When she arrives, she finds out it is her former boyfriend who has made the below-market but fair offer for the ranch. She is having none of that. Diego has given up his finance career in Mexico City to return to the soil and find his soul by owning the ranch that his ancestors have been caretakers of for generations. While going over the financials, Abril discovers an old loan which has never been repaid. Belinda explains that the loan had been sold and then resold and she doesn’t even know who owns the loan now and that whoever owns it has never asked for payment. She was advised to just forget about it. Rest assured that this will eventually come back to bite them. Abril looks for investors so she and Belinda can retain ownership and keep from selling it to Diego.  She discloses the loan to an interested party, as she is legally and ethically bound to do, and he ends up finding the loan, buying it, and asking for immediate payment or else he will take over the ranch and they will get nothing. Now faced with a common enemy, Diego and Abril end their hostilities and start working together, etc., etc. She wishes she had just sold the ranch to Diego especially since Belinda really and truly wants nothing to do with it anymore.

So many questions. First off could a bank do that? The answer is yes, depending on the original terms of the loan. But they cannot demand late payment penalties like they are doing. Belinda and Abril’s lawyer, a very handsome guy and really nice and Belinda’s love interest, threatens to tie the whole thing up in court. To avoid that, the bank offers to forgive the loan if they sell them the ranch for a fraction of its worth, much below Diego’s offer. At no time are we told the amounts of Diego’s offer, the size of the loan, the income from the ranch, its fair market value, or what the bank offered for the ranch. So it was all very murky. Abril contacts a former colleague in America who owes her a solid about investing in the ranch. He doesn’t want to do that, but offers Abril a position in his company with a high salary because he feels partially responsible for Abril’s reputation being ruined and being a pariah in the industry. Abril is ecstatic because that “solves everything.”  Diego and Belinda are confused, as was I, but Abril explains that now that she has a steady income, she does not have to rely on her savings to keep body and soul together while she is unemployed. Along with her savings, if she sells her condo, she can personally pay off the loan, and then she and Belinda can accept Diego’s offer to buy the ranch.  Belinda and Diego point out to this double MBA in Finance that the loan is twice as much as Abril would get back from the sale. But Abril assures them that it is “not about the money”. I thought Belinda should have at least offered her a share in her restaurant-to-be but she doesn’t. On the other hand, has poor Belinda ever been compensated by Abril for doing all the work running the ranch? Just a random thought. Later Abril suggests to Diego that maybe they could be partners and run the ranch together (she, remotely, from Boston) and she gets a big “No”. He does not want to share.

 So if I figure correctly, Abril loses her share of the ranch plus half of all her savings and the sale price of her condo. “You’re investing $10 to get back $5!” She has to find a new and cheaper place while working for a company which offered her a job out of guilt. But that’s OK because she has the satisfaction of helping her cousin achieve her dream and knowing that her family ranch will be in the hands of someone who will preserve its legacy and not in the hands of a greedy bank. Methinks Abril got the short end of the stick, and I really wouldn’t encourage her to put this on her resume. On her way back to Boston, in a considerably worse financial situation than when she left, Diego enters stage left at the Iguazú Falls, to save the day. He has had a think, and decides that he has been too proud and will now let Abril be his partner in the ranch instead of paying her the cash as long as she stays there with him in Argentina. He loves her, she loves him, and Abril decides that is a fine idea and they kiss.

Juan Pablo Di Pace, who played Diego, was very handsome and charismatic and Julie Gonzalo has never looked lovelier. They were both born in Argentina and were pretty good together. The rest of the cast were all local actors, and they were all great. The Argentinian setting was interesting and beautiful. It all looked pretty authentic to me, except their gaucho clothes looked a little costume-y. But I felt like Abril thoughtlessly discounted Belinda’s desire to sell the Ranch and Diego rubbed me the wrong way as well. He was inflexible and stubborn off and on through most of the movie added to a chip of class warfare of his shoulder. At the end of the day, the things that bugged me outweighed what I liked.