In a rundown area of Buenos Aires, at the dawn of the 1980s, Adrian LeDuc owns both a struggling movie theater and a shabby apartment building filled with eccentric, squabbling tenants. To make ends meet, Adrian takes in a roommate, Jack Carney, but soon begins to suspect that the quiet American is responsible for a series of political assassinations that are rocking the city.
Acting
Firth's Adrian: sweaty, repressed, spectacularly unraveling.
Direction
Donovan weaponizes cramped spaces and glances.
Cinematography
Buenos Aires as decaying character, all shadows and peeling paint.
Director
Martin Donovan
Colin Firth
Adrian LeDuc
Hart Bochner
Jack Carney
Dora Bryan
Margaret McKinney
Liz Smith
Mary Louise McKinney
Mirella D'Angelo
Laura Werpachowsky
Fabrizio Bentivoglio
Carlos Sanchez-Verne
Juan Vitali
Alberto Werpachowsky
Cipe Lincovsky
Mrs. Treniev
Francesca D'Aloja
Claudia
Elvia Andreoli
Adrian's Mother
Federico D'Elía
Boy in Cafe
Miguel Ligero
Mr. Palmer
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Director Martin Donovan (not the actor) never made another feature; this remains his singular, obsessive statement.
Shot during Argentina's return to democracy, the film mirrors national trauma through one man's eroticized self-destruction. Adrian's cinema screens Hitchcock while his life becomes one.
AR
GB
