Apartment Zero (1988) dir. Martin Donovan writ. Donovan and David Epp cine. Miguel Rodriguez star. Colin Firth (Adrian LeDuc), Hart Bochner (Jack Carney), Dora Bryan, Liz Smith, Fabrizio Bentivoglio 

The brilliance of this film is marred by its silly ending where you are forced to endure yet another struggle for a gun under less than convincing circumstances. But make no mistake -- this is a serious piece of work which deals with the horror of the death squads in Argentina after the Malvinas/Falkland Islands war. Adrian LeDuc is an Anglophile living in Buenos Aires where he runs a small movie theatre called Cine York, playing Hollywood classics to such small audiences that he's unable to pay his ticket girl. To draw extra cash, he decides to sub-let a room in his comfortable apartment, aptly numbered "Zero" in a building that hosts two old English women, a transsexual nightclub singer, a bi-sexual loser, and a lonely young "grass widow" whose husband is always leaving. 

When Jack Carney, a handsome young American who says he's working for a computer company as part of an exchange shows up, it's love at first sight -- Jack is a dead ringer for Richard Gere. Already the symbolisms within the situation are revealing themselves. Adrian's mother is insane and in decline -- not unlike Argentina perhaps -- and he meets his saviour as an exteriorization of the American movies he admires. His own sanity in fact is questionable -- he pretends to be English, shuns his neighbors, moves at night, is only truly secure within the fantasy of his theatre, Cine York. 

Then, of course, there is the question of the troubling series of murders plaguing Buenos Aires. A serial killer appears to be at work, although the deaths are probably political, part of the right-wing agenda. 

Much to Adrian's chagrin, Jack's charisma draws him into relationships with the other tenants in the building. He saves the English women's cat. He consoles and protects the transsexual after she's humiliated by a man in a movie house. He consoles Carlos after he fails with a woman. He consoles the young wife after her husband leaves once again. He's like a sexual Christ, a saviour for the lonely, an ambassador for the American solution.Jack: You confess your sins to a stranger because he will absolve you.Laura: Yes, yes... my father was the perfect stranger...Jack: And what does my little girl need?Victima Numero 14So while Jack appears to be a lover, it develops that he's also a killer -- a mercenary hired by the army to take care of undesirables. 

His unmasking is slow, as if Adrian is in denial. Jack gives Adrian a silver cross for his mother. Adrian is suspicious, jealous:Adrian: If that's a mask, take it off now or keep it on forever.Jack: (smiling) What do you want to know?Adrian: Who are you?Jack: Whoever you want me to be...Adrian knows Jack doesn't work at Intercom, but it's when Claudia, his ticket girl, persuades him to allow her group to use his theatre to screen some death squad documentaries, that Jack is revealed as a killer mercenary. Adrian recognizes him in the black and white footage, although Claudia is uncertain. Later she visits Apartment Zero looking for Adrian, finds Jack alone, becomes Victima Numero 14. 

When Adrian comes home and finds Jack with Claudia's body, he does the only thing a man in love can do -- help his friend dispose of the body. Adrian has just buried his mother in a stone tomb. So he's susceptible to complete madness himself -- and indeed this is where he goes. By the end of the film you see him emerging from Cine York wearing a black leather jacket and shades, having absorbed his doppelganger, the movie star of his dreams. "He was some kind of man..."Ambitious, the sub-text often threatens to overwhelm the story. It's the mating of two different kinds of lunacy. In a film with so many metaphors, you wonder if Adrian's movie obsession is developed to its full potential. Jack tries to use Adrian's identity to escape but he becomes the first victim in a new cycle. What does it all mean? At the start, Cine York is showing Welles' Touch of Evil... another story about an ugly American

What do movie buffs do in the daytime? Some people wonder, but not for very long. If you go to the same theatre night after night, you'll see the guy who wears the same shirt every night & switches his seat six times during the movie, the guy who routinely arrives an hour late (or 23 hours early), the guy who chain smokes in between features and never looks at or talks to anyone, the guy who always sits in the front row and can't wait to see every movie Dennis O'Keefe played in as an extra, the guy who arrives unannounced at the residences of ninety-year-old actresses with an armful of 8" by l0" studio stills and a marking pen, the guy who sits next to you and invites himself on your unplanned 500 mile trip to a fan convention the day after tomorrow. Yeh, they're mostly guys. If you're not, they'll tolerate you if you know who Bob Steele and Verna Hillie are, but they only have eyes for starlets whose careers ended before they were born. Half of them hate each other on sight, like territorial tom cats, the other half aren't on speaking terms, unless someone wants to show off because he's seen Lloyd Bridges in 1935's "Dancing Feet" in a bit and he's the only one who HAS (in a Dungeon-God-knows-where). Ah, the magic of the movies... 

Adrian Le Duc (Colin Firth) would fit right in with this crowd, if he can ever tear himself away from his Buenos Aires projection booth and "Apartment Zero". For all his hard-earned cinematic knowledge, Adrian is intrinsically lonely & desperately in need of deep friendship. Adrian is picky, though. If someone doesn't know who Geraldine Page is, that's it, Adrian gave him his chance. When delectable Jack Carney (Hart Bochner) turns up applying to be his flat mate, Adrian gazes on him as if he's all 42 reels of 1924's "Greed" or the nitrate original of 1928's "The Divine Woman." Jack doesn't know anything about movies, though. He doesn't even recognize the beautifully framed photograph of Montgomery Clift on Adrian's wall. It doesn't matter, though. Adrian is hooked. So is everyone else in Adrian's building, who absolutely adore Jack, especially after he rescues a pussy cat. Adrian is jealous. He doesn't mix with the neighbors. Adrian's obsession with his flat mate grows as Jack puts up with his moods and pacifies him at every turn. Jack even suggests picking up girls together, but Adrian doesn't like girls, only women like the framed supernovas back at the flat. Then Adrian discovers that Jack isn't what he thought he was and vice-a versa. Things get Dark and Creepy and Furtive and don't forget that we're not in Kansas, Toto, we're in Argentina where people come and go so quickly, Dear. 

This smashingly acted, wonderfully satisfying chiller is chock full of Film Lore (including a great movie game you can play at home with your friends) and Plenty of Surprises. Colin Firth, a sexy matinee idol since 1984's "Another Country," is still a sexy matinee idol after playing Darcy in 1995's "Pride and Prejudice." Hart Bochner spent a lot of time making LONG miniseries on American television before directing 1994's very funny "P.C.U." with Jeremy Piven, David Spade & Jessica Walters, followed by 1996's "High School High." 

© 2001 - Monica Sullivan - Air Date: 10/10/01