Chinese Take-Away

In Buenos Aires, Roberto runs a hardware shop, lives alone, speaks to nobody and clips absurd stories out of newspapers. One day he comes across a man from China who speaks no Spanish, thrown out of a taxi, with nobody and nothing but a tattoo. Roberto ends up taking him in. The subject is not cultural difference but the fact that both men have suffered the same kind of loss. Why Roberto is so closed and why Jun is in Argentina turn out, as the film proceeds, to lead to the same place: each lost someone to an accident too absurd to narrate. The form is quiet comedy; with no shared language, the scenes run on gesture and misunderstanding, but the film does not turn that into easy joke material. The cow story at the opening was taken from a real event; Sebastián Borensztein wrote the screenplay out of that strange news item and built the whole narrative on the meaninglessness of coincidence. The film drew large audiences in Argentina and won a Goya in Spain. Ricardo Darín plays Roberto and Ignacio Huang plays Jun. Who it is for: viewers who like Argentine cinema, Darín, and quiet humour. Who it is not for: anyone who wants Jun to be developed in his own right; the film looks mostly from Roberto's side.