It is the morning after a tremendous flood has ravaged an Argentine coastal village. Officials move in to relocate the community to Santa Fe, where they are ensconced in a dirt encampment at the center of the city. To their further dismay, they also find themselves at the center of furious pre-election politics. Both sides promise them aid, but there they sit. Ridiculous? Fernando Birri does not hesitate to say so: the film is a marvelous mixture of jaunty sarcasm and grating irony. It focuses on one family, the Gaitans, who try to make ends meet, and to make sense out of the nonsense spewing forth from reporters and ministers (all wearing dark glasses to hide their own perplexity). The Gaitans find themselves on an adventure in the Argentine countryside when the boxcar in which they have been living begins to move-and suddenly we are in the land of Buñuel. (On the car is written, "Be kind to the animals.") Fernando Birri's apprenticeship among the late neorealists is evident, yet there is a visual humor here that is distinctly Latin American. As the Gaitans are turned away from station after station because, administratively, their boxcar does not exist, we are reminded also of the comi-tragic absurdity in Eastern European cinema.