Tan de repente

‘Will you sleep with me?’, the street girl Mao bluntly asks the chubby lingerie salesgirl Marcia. The stunned Marcia, who has only just arrived in the big city, refuses. So she is kidnapped by Mao and her girlfriend Lenin at knife point. In a stolen taxi, they head for the coast, to prove their love for Marcia. Marcia has, after all, never seen the sea. This is the start of a strange film that at first looks like a road movie. After the visit to the sea, the three head for the city of Rosario, where they stay with an old aunt of Lenin. There, the characters that have so far been impenetrable transform into people of flesh and blood. In these loving surroundings, the lonely Marcia, the silent Lenin and even the manipulative Mao thaw out. Diego Lerman’s successful début (Silver Leopard at the Locarno Festival) is reminiscent of the cinema of Jarmusch or early Wenders, partly thanks to the black & white photography. This ever surprising film provides evidence of a great insight into the problems of Lerman’s contemporaries and their relationship to the generation of their grandparents. However realistic Tan de repente may be (for instance thanks to the excellent non-professional actors and the setting), the film is convincing in its minor and inexplicable events.