Institute History
Description
Cinephile Adrian LeDuc (Colin Firth) lives in an impressive Argentine apartment complex in which the neighbors delight in minding everyone else’s business. He runs a revival movie house in Buenos Aires, showing films less for profit than for pleasure. When his mother suffers a collapses and is hospitalized, he is forced to take in a boarder to ameliorate his debts, a notion utterly repulsive to his fiercely ;private and fastidious personality. Enter Jack Carney (Hart Bochner), a ruggedly handsome American, who in Adrian’s eyes represents those carefree and magnetic movies start whom he idolizes.
The two men strike up a strange relationship, with Jack prowling the streets of Buenos Aires to satisfy his voracious sexual appetite under Adrian’s disapproving eye. The backdrop for their burgeoning interdependence is a city wracked by a series of grisly murders, believed to be the work of a former member of the right-wing death squads. Once insulated and uncaring, Adrian gradually becomes fixated on Jack, and his behavior begins to resemble that of a jealous lover. Political and sexual intrigue mounts, and Adrian does not begin to comprehend the gravity of the situation until he is in well over his head.
Apartment Zero is an imaginative, atmospheric and suggestively sexual thriller from director Martin Donovan. Well-drawn characters and unexpected casting enrich this clever and taut film, which is also not without its humor, albeit macabre.