Directed and Written by Gustavo Taretto
Music/Soundtrack Credits to Gabriel Chwojnik
Martin is a phobic in the process of recovery. Little by little he manages to step out of the isolation of his one-room apartment and his virtual reality. He is a web designer. Mariana just broke up after a long relacionship. Her head is a mess, just like the apartment where she takes refuge. Martin and Mariana live on the same street, in opposite buildings, but they've never met. They walk through the same places, but they do not notice each other. How can they meet in a city of three milion people? Urban loneliness. Buenos Aires. What separes them is what brings them together.
Medianeras is the name normally given to building's walls that have no windows. These walls, normally called as blind walls as well. This happens as a consequence of the the proximity to the nearby building, in order to cut the visual contact between the neighboors.
In this simple, yet so emotional movie, a symbolic metaphor of human relacions is felt in the way how we always have a blind wall in ourselves, sometimes so close to another person that feels as lost as we are. A window away to escape from loneliness... And we, so many times, don't even know how close we can be.
The argentin architecture is an important influence on this movie. With a huge variety of clean and geometrically symetrical shots, the audience is capable to imagine themselfs living in the enourmous city that Buenos Aires is, where the arquitecture, even being apparently ugly or even desorganized, reflects the type of lifes that we can find over there.
Anyone that lives in a big city, knows how Loneliness can be around us. We live in a society that, day by day, forgets that a hug can be stronger that some written words or a call. Strings of technology and virtual communications are getting more control, holding hands with that feeling you have, every night, when you get home, living with people that you probably don't even know their second names, and you just feel alone.
In a big city like Buenos Aires, Mariana (Pilar Lopez de Ayala) and Martín (Javier Drolas) live that universal feeling that comes across when hundreds of people pass you by and you know you are all just independent soulds from each other, just colliding, without being connected, every day. These two lonely souls are neighboors and they didn't even know about each other. Their paths cross every single day and they don't recognize themselfs. This huge methaphor exemplifies the real world and our society, how we look but we don't see, how we can came across with love without even knowing it, everyday.
Tarutto reveals the anxieties and isolation in which Mariana and Martín live, as a consequence of some past relationships.
The director creates an ideal sequence of thoughts and exposes the particular fears and dreams of the central figures of the movie, getting us along and familiar with their lifes, having us cheering until the finally, perfect moment when the couple finally meets.
Martín is passing through a depressed and isolated phase of his life. Being a web designer, he admits that since the first moment he sitted in front of his computer, he never went anywhere else after.
Mariana finished a 4 year relacion and it's trying to put up the individual pieces left after the breakup.
Both actors makes us believe in their sadness, in their dispair against the feeling that completely broke their lifes. However, true love will find them in the end. The emotional commitment and feelings that the caracters transmite during the whole feature, are felt as true. The fact that the whole movie is in spanish, gives an extra strength to the passion to the story.
This fresh feature, with a soundtrack that flows with the cuts and sequences of images that appear, shows how Taretto's looks to our modern society, loosing faith in love but, in the end, finding it in a random corner, how Wallie appears in the middle of a huge crowd in our child books.
(Sugestion: If you loved this movie, you should see 500 Days of Summer)
