The Paranoids

Gabriel Medina's 2008 Argentine film follows Luciano, who works at children's birthday parties in Buenos Aires while trying to write his first feature. Everything is disturbed when his friend Manuel returns from Spain: Manuel's television series is a success, his girlfriend is beautiful, and he is everything Luciano is not. Manuel's attempts to help only make it worse. The film's most honest quality is showing jealousy not as an emotion but as a state of paralysis; Luciano does nothing, only watches, and rots inwardly. Daniel Hendler's performance refuses to make the character's passivity charming. This vein of the new Argentine cinema is distinctive in treating personal collapse through humour. Who it's for: viewers who like Argentine independent cinema and character-driven black comedy. Who it's not for: anyone wanting plot and development, or who will find the protagonist's passivity wearing.