Starring: Martin Miller, Teo Inama Chiabrando, Azul Mazzeo
Director: Mariano Biasin
Country: Argentina
Manuel (Miller) and Felipe (Chiabrando) are teenage best friends and live in a small coastal town in Argentina. They play in a band together and are in the process of converting a van into a love nest where they can entertain their girlfriends. Manuel’s girlfriend (Mazzeo) has begun to notice, however, that he isn’t that interested when they are together in her as his thoughts are often elsewhere. What she doesn’t know is that he is fantasising about Felipe, with whom he has fallen desperately in love.
A coming-of-age flick for teen rockers, the film invests much time in the boys’ band and the songs they play together. For the boys, their ever-so-earnest compositions are life itself; a reflection of their troubles and their personalities. Capturing this adolescent artistic intensity, the boys are staid, sombre and mired in their teenage anguish, especially Manuel, who weighs up the priorities of friendship, his feelings and the band.
Unfortunately, this is a film in which not much actually happens. We watch Manual watching Felipe a lot; at home, in school, with the band. Manuel’s fantasies pepper the film, but its reality is just a slow and pedestrian plod through their bog-standard friendship. They may have guitars, but that doesn’t make them any different from boys their age. And the songs they play are on the wrong side of mediocre.
Aiming to capture the lovesick angst of adolescence, this is instead the filmic manifestation of a teenage boy sulking in his bedroom.
UK Release: 6th February 2023 on VOD, released by Peccadillo Pictures
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