After sexing things up a bit in 2016’s (co-directed) “Taekwondo,” wherein a bunch of underdressed, hardbodied men frolicked during a country retreat, indie Argentine helmer Marco Berger is back on …
), his coworker at a woodworking machine shop, invites him to move into his inherited flat in a nondescript Buenos Aires suburb after another housemate leaves. It’s a convenient and congenial-enough arrangement, with shy Gabe casually accepted into the circle of guy pals who routinely stop over to watch TV and drink beer.
When they’re alone, however, there is no mistaking the frisson between Gabe and Juan. Since his more humorously tilted debut feature “Plan B” a decade ago, Berger has been expert at charging the space between characters with erotic tension. It takes over half an hour for the dam to finally burst between his lead characters here, and afterward Juan seems dismissive, even cavalier about their interlude. But after a second tryst, their dynamic grows more intimate, even boyfriend-ly.
Nonetheless, there’s an unforced poignance to this tale, whose surface aesthetics are as beguilingly simple as the emotions beneath are complexly conflicted. Indeed, an economy of presentation works so well here that the rare intrusion of Pedro Irusta’s solo piano score feels gratuitous.
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Venice Film Review: ‘Babyteeth’You only get one flush of first love, and it tends to choose you rather than the other way round: For most of us, it’s an experiment, a flight test of the heart, a thing you can afford to get…
Read more »
Film Review: ‘Blink of an Eye’A Hollywood screenwriter could hardly have scripted the story of NASCAR drivers Michael Waltrip and Dale Earnhardt more dramatically, and for the most part, “Blink of an Eye” stirringly recounts th…
Read more »
Telluride Film Review: ‘The Aeronauts’There is something disarming about the joint presence of the ever-bashful Eddie Redmayne and the fiercely charismatic Felicity Jones that instantly feels wholesome. So when the duo embarks on a hot…
Read more »
Venice Film Review: ‘Saturday Fiction’From 1937 to 1941, Shanghai was dubbed a “solitary island” in that, alone in China after the Japanese invasion, there were areas within it that were under international control, namely …
Read more »
Venice Film Review: ‘Balloon’As a Tibetan director dedicated to illuminating, with love and insight, the everyday culture of your contested homeland, navigating China’s labyrinthine and often-changing filmmaking approval…
Read more »
'The Long Walk' ('Bor Mi Vanh Chark'): Film Review | Venice 2019The third feature from U.S.-born Laotian director Mattie Do premiered in the Giornate degli autori section in Venice before its Toronto bow.
Read more »