_Apartment Zero_
reviewed by Cynthia Fuchs


     Any movie that opens with the last line of Orson Welles' _Touch of
Evil_ has something up its sleeve. As we hear Marlene Dietrich intoning
over Welles' bloated, dead body, "What does it matter what you say about
people? He was some kind of a man," we watch theater-owner Adrian (Colin
Firth) watch from the projection booth. And from this moment, Martin
Donovan's fascinating _Apartment Zero_ only gets better. 

     Unfortunately for Adrian, there are only two people sitting in his
Buenos Aires rep house to see this classic cinematic moment. Forced to cut
back, he decides to rent half his apartment (that's 0) in the building he
owns. Enter Jack, a gorgeous blue-eyed hunk of an American who wears black
tee shirts and a perpetual, intriguing near-sneer. As played by the
previously plastic Hart Bochner, Jack is a stunning tease, alternately
smoldering and vulnerable, sort of jutting his chin toward his own brand
of rock'n'roll suicide. 

     Coming after a hilarious parade of prospective tenants who sniff and
poke around the apartment, Jack seems a Prince Charming indeed. Or rather,
as the shot aligning him with Adrian's framed photo of James Dean would
indicate, a troubled, beautiful youth. So what if his job description
seems vague and he mistakes _National Velvet_ for _Blue Velvet_? A
self-described "Felix Unger," the uptight Adrian is smitten. 

     But this is no regular crush. If Jack appears an enigma, Adrian has
his own hysterical and confused background, which are peeled away by
remarkable and unpredictable layers. An Argentinian raised in England
where his father was a diplomatic attache, Adrian affects a British accent
to "avoid the neighbors'' (a directive he gives Jack almost immediately).
Rather than talk to people, he watches movies. Adrian's visits to his
recently institutionalized mother suggest another side to his self-imposed
isolation. Devastatingly incoherent, she continually refers to her mirror,
bemoaning her loss of self while Adrian prattles on about his new
roommate. The fastidious son-demanding mother motif has never been so
weird or disturbing. 

     Adrian begins cooking breakfast and doing laundry for Jack, who
accepts it all with sincere appreciation and understandable wonder. We see
him as Adrian does, through the steamy clouded glass of the shower, while
they play Adrian's movie trivia games. One night Adrian discovers his new
roommate in tears, and their conversation is rendered in increasingly
intense and unnerving close-ups. As Adrian grows more infatuated, the
other tenants also take an interest in Jack, who impresses everyone by
rescuing a cat in the midst of "a nervous breakdown'' from a ceiling lamp.
This haphazard hero services all those in need, including a lonely woman
(Mirella D'Angelo), a young man with a leftover high school homosexual
crush, and the transvestite Vanessa (James Telfer). 

     Devoutly apolitical but more and more obsessed with Jack, Adrian
(through a series of small discoveries) soon comes to suspect that his
dashing object of desire is a death squad mercenary. And if the film
doesn't explore the massive ideological implications of this twist, it
does probe deeply into multiple other versions of psychopathology. 

     It's all about sex, both warped and curative. It's about a desperate
desire for trust, thwarted by self-doubt. Best of all, it's about the
confusion of roles and power. The film moves so deviously and its nuances
are at once so perverse and familiar, that the tension is profound even
when the pace lags or the political underpinnings seem an afterthought.
Even as Adrian expectedly comes unhinged, the too cool Jack does too, and
they move together toward a startling, if not wholly satisfying, end.
Their mirrored disintegration is stunningly revealed in Miguel Rodriguez's
phenomenal cinematography, which makes interiors, city streets, and the
ultra-glassed shopping mall equally claustrophobic. Full of color and
strangeness, this unsettling film reveals, more than anything else, the
absurdity of some kinds of men. 

Cynthia Fuchs teaches film/media studies and is coordinator of the queer
studies project at George Mason University.

Copyright by Cynthia Fuchs.  All rights reserved.
Please do not reprint this review without the permission of the author.

This review originally appeared in the Philadelphia _City Paper_.