Andres and Me

A mysterious young man (Hill) arrives in a rain-soaked, seemingly sparsely-populated, northern Italian town to investigate, it transpires, the disappearance of Andres Carrera, a lookalike publisher and political speechwriter rumoured to have departed for South America. Entering the absent man’s flat, he tries on the man’s clothes for size, enjoys his idiosnycratic vinyl music collection, applies for his job, even befriends his father.  Adriatico’s carefully-observed mystery is a crepuscular affair, which adumbrates its intellectual interests  – whether in the mutability of identity, bad faith or the abstractions of social, sexual or architectural environments – in a dreamlike, cinematic cloak. Many will find her film pretentious or annoyingly obfuscating; may wonder, for instance, whether Adriatico’s portrayal of – almost subplot with – the dying mother is meant as part of an some extended metaphor about the divided Italian family; but there’s no doubting the director’s exploratory ambition, her ability to conjure up minatory atmosphere and her probing originality.