Manolo Nieto uses similar tropes to his previous film, El Lugar del Hijo, pushing a neo-realist use of location and event. The film concludes with a Raid, a rural horse race on the Uruguay Brazil border, in which Carlos, the empleado of the title, participates. This geographical zone is also one where El Lugar del Hijo was set, and Arauco Hernandez Holz’s vivid cinematography is another echo. Against this backdrop, the film tackles issues of class and land. Carlos, the empleado, is drafted in by Rodrigo when there is a labour shortage. He’s the son of a man who worked for Rodrigo’s father. Both these families have their own relationship with the land, and both inhabit it in a different fashion. One of the most striking scenes is when Carlos’ family appear on horseback whilst he is driving a tractor. They loom up on the horizon like something out of a John Ford film. Carlos’ family belongs to the Wild West, with its gaucho values, whereas Rodrigo’s capitalist family have adopted a life of easy luxury, selling soy to Europe. Rodrigo buys off the cops when he’s busted with marijuana on the wrong side of the border and he has even been converted to vegetarianism by his pretty, brittle wife, Federica. This contrast leads to inevitable conflict, even if it’s a conflict both men seem reluctant to embrace, wary warriors unwilling to lay their cards on the table. This reluctance makes for a slow burner of a movie, one which simmers and never quite comes to the boil. There is even the sense the denouement, where Carlos participates in the raid, perhaps seeks to overcompensate, as the sequence extends itself towards a dramatic resolution that feels telegraphed. Nevertheless, El Empleado y el Patron is a movie which succeeds in representing the twin poles of a country still caught in a timewarp, where gaucho values are celebrated, but struggle to sustain their place in a globalised world.
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