Humanity gets a fairer share in The Violin than in Bruno Dumont's Flanders, and the wider variety of emotions on display makes the violence endured by the characters more affecting. Set during an unnamed Latin American country's civil war, Francisco Vargas Quevedo's film pits guerrilla rebels against oppressive military forces, with an elderly violinist (a wonderful Ángel Tavira) traveling between the two groups in an effort to help out his son, one of the rebels. The story's penchant for peasant nobility and aged sagacity is kept in check by Vargas's unsentimental admiration for the characters' revolt, and by a sensitivity to the complex emotional connections of music that brings to mind Ichikawa's The Burmese Harp.  Fernando F. Croce