Film Reviews

Posted: Sat., Dec. 31, 1988, 11:00pm PT

Apartment Zero

(UK)

Summit. Director Martin Donovan; Producer Martin Donovan, David Koepp; Writer Martin Donovan, David Koepp; Camera Miguel Rodriguez Editor Conrad M. Gonzalez; Music Elia Cmiral Art Miguel Angel Lumaldo
Colin Firth Hart Bochner Dora Bryan Liz Smith Fabrizio Bentivoglio Cipe Lincovsky
Apartment Zero emerges as a genuinely creepy, disturbing and gripping psychological piece.

Story's fundamental opposition is between Colin Firth, the nervously repressed, emotionally constipated British cinephile, and Hart Bochner, a charming, loose, Yankee rascal whom Firth takes into his lovely flat as a boarder when finances demand it.

Periodically, there are reports of serial murders taking place throughout Buenos Aires, and suggestions that mercenary foreigners who came to Argentina in the employ of the Death Squads may still be active. Suspicion grows that the enigmatic Bochner may not be what he claims.

Both actors are excellent, with Firth expressing and transcending the irritating emotional constriction of a non-participant in life, and Bochner displaying hitherto unrevealed talent portraying a profoundly split personality.

(Color) Available on VHS, DVD. Extract of a review from 1989. Running time: 124 MIN.

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