CASTRO .World Cinema

From the unforgettable opening moments, featuring a goggle of characters dashing about the streets of Buenos Aires as if their lives depended on it, Alejo Moguillonsky’s sneaky, frantic film pounces on the viewer with a giddy energy This cockeyed semi-comedy’s unlikely basis is Samuel Beckett’s 1938 novel Murphy, but it preserves only the book’s central conceit: a set of characters constantly in pursuit of the title character ready to check out of the rot race and sever all ties with his post. Moguillonsky wrote, edited and directed and, in his clever story, Castro (Edgardo Castro) is on the run from a bunch of guys whom his peeved wife Rebecca (Carla Crespo) has tasked with bringing her hubby back home. There’s nothing in contemporary cinema quite like Moguillonsky’s absurdist highwire act-imagine a postmodern Mock Sennett two-reeler filtered through Jacques Rivette’s CELINE AND JULIE GO BOATING.