La Antena Xxy Caramel And Heartbeat Detector (from Abingdon Herald)

The continuing strength of New Argentine Cinema is demonstrated by two films on release this week. Dazzlingly inventive throughout, Esteban Sapir's La Antena is a noirish fantasy set in the Year XX in the City Without a Voice, whose population has been struck dumb by the TV broadcasts of the sinisterly omnipresent Alejandro Urdapilleta.

Drawing on the look and mood of such Expressionist classics as Metropolis (1927), this futuristic parable is pleasingly intricate. Urdapilleta particularly revels in his devilry, as he, medical sidekick Carlos Pineiro and rodentine henchman Raul Hochman target speccy inventor Rafael Ferro, who alone can save mystery singer Florencia Raggi and her blind son, and, thus, frustrate Urdapilleta's plan to steal the very words out of the citizens' mouths. But what sets this apart is Sapir's brilliant pastiche of silent screen style, with the use of superimposition, silhouette and studio-bound décor even surpassing that in Guy Maddin's majestic melodrama, Careful (1992).

Less flamboyant, but equally compelling, is Lucia Puenzo's XXY, which is set on the Uruguayan coast and centres on the crisis of identity blighting Inés Efron. A teenage hermaphrodite who lives as a girl, Efron is being coerced into making a decision about her future by marine biologist Ricardo Darín and his wife Valeria Bertucelli, who has invited plastic surgeon German Palacios, his wife Carolina Pelereti and their hormonal (and latently gay) son Martín Piroyanski to stay and discuss the options. However, Efron is unwilling to be rushed, even though she's being bullied by classmate Luciano Nobile, whose pals at one point nearly gang rape her before Darin intervenes.

Eschewing easy solutions and delicately played by a fine cast, this tense drama is beautifully photographed by Natasha Braier in langurous long shots that allow the various dilemmas to simmer in their inexpressible emotionality.

Lebanese actress Nadine Labaki similarly considers the strains placed upon family ties in a time of crisis in her directorial debut, Caramel. Set in a Beirut beauty parlour, this is an assured insight into the dilemmas facing women in a society caught between oppressive patriarchy and Western chic. Labaki herself stars as a free spirit slowly realising the drawbacks of an affair with a married man, while Yasmine Elmasri fears her future husband will discover she's not a virgin, Gisèle Aouad fights the curse of ageing, Sihame Haddad struggles to suppress resentment for her older sister, and Joanna Moukarzel tries to control her lesbian urges.

Adroitly shifting tone between soap and sitcom, this is consistently amusing and frequently revealing. Moreover, it makes a fine companion piece to the recent Franco-Iranian animation, Persepolis.

Finally, in Heartbeat Detector, calculating suit Jean-Pierre Kalfon orders in-house psychologist Mathieu Amalric to assess the sanity of French chemical company director Michel Lonsdale after the German head office becomes concerned by reports of his increasingly erratic behaviour. However, as Amalric (a loner whose own life is far from even-keeled) begins his investigation, he comes to realise that the firm's shiny façade hides a murky past.

Suggesting that the competitive spirit of modern capitalism originated in the political excesses of the early 20th century, Nicolas Klotz's simmering adaptation of François Emmanuel's bestseller is a searing indictment of corporate responsibility that will intrigue conspiracy theorists, as Amalric becomes aware of the sinister motives for his mission and the significance of Lonsdale's membership of a long-disbanded string quartet. Dark, intense and deeply disconcerting.

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