» SYNOPSIS

The year is 1988. The setting is Buenos Aires, Argentina, a city where it is very easy to vanish. Walking anxiously amongst the Argentine civilians is Adrian LeDuc, an introverted and unsettled cinema club owner. His business is rapidly declining, his mother has been institutionalized and he is troubled by his eccentric, curious neighbours. Adrian lives alone in apartment '0' (so-called because the prefixing '1' has fallen off), and surrounds himself with images of his classic screen idols - the closest thing he has to a circle of friends. He stays awake at night in animated conversations with the walls...solitude brings no comfort to this neurotic recluse.

When Adrian finds himself in debt, he is forced to rent out his spare bedroom, vacated by his declining mother. After a string of ghastly applicants Adrian is fed up - but then somebody knocks at the door. Enter Jack Carney - American, disarmingly handsome, smooth, gallant and bearing an uncanny resemblance to James Dean. Adrian is infatuated in an instant, and within minutes their chemistry seals the deal - they become roommates.

Jack is a constant source of fascination for Adrian; the mystery surrounding his past - and indeed his present - have a thrilling allure. Jack is tremendously charming, and before long (and despite Adrian's warnings) he has every other tenant in the building under his spell. Jack's magic is also seductive to both women and men; he comforts an attractive female pining for her husband's return, fulfills an adolescent fantasy for a feminine young man and rescues a transexual from being attacked in a theatre. He loves to play the hero and in true Hollywood style romances his grateful targets.

Meanwhile, Adrian lives with selective vision, oblivious to the slaughters occurring in Buenos Aires...people are being captured in the night and killed mercilessly. When he finally pays attention, suspicions are aroused and he wonders whether Jack is all that he really seems to be. Then the truth slowly unravels and the masks begin to slip - during a screening of documentaries by his cinema assistant Claudia, he is shocked to see images of Jack as a member of terrorist organization CO2.

The challenges that Adrian and Jack face in their relationship not only involve fear, threat and trust. There is also a struggle for control of the mind and how susceptible an unstable person can be. Who has the real capacity to be a killer?


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