Apartamento Zero

An original film!! I enjoyed it from the moment it started!! A very appealing film. Wonderful cast!! A must for Geraldine Page fans (you have to see it to understand that)!!!! An unknown little gem!!

I had a strange memory of this film. Unsettling. Frightening. Every so often I meet someone who's a devotee of Apartment Zero and I kept meaning to see it again. Well, last night, it happened. It took me completely by surprise. Clearly the first time I saw it I hadn't venture "into" the apartment. This time I did. Colin Firth is, is, I can't find the words. He creates a character I've never seen before in a movie. The sort of character you keep at arms length. Too creepy and gloomy but before you know it, you're with him, you feel for him, you start to recognize him until you say, wow, that's me. Hart Bochner is pure perfection as the catalyst with the mask. The characters in the building, the Greek chorus, are a xenophobe's nightmare. Elegant, brittle, hilarious and yes, terrifying at times but look at it. Where is the terror coming from? It points in one direction but you go there on your own. Oh yes. This Zero is a Ten.

I couldn't speak for quite a while after the movie was over. I had been taken for an emotional ride and I was totally unprepared for it. Colin Firth is extraordinary in his tragicomic creation. Firth manages to find a "shape" for his character's insecurities. It is moving and funny, creepy and never before seen. Can you name a character like Adrian in another movie? Someone made the comparison with Roman Polanski in "The Tenant" and although I understand, I disagree. There is a flash of intellect in Firth's Adrian that made the character, for me, totally real. I know that guy and that thought alone is disturbing. Hart Bochner's Jack is perfect as the catalyst, the tempter because when he's looking at Adrian we can break through the darkness and realize that he's as human as Adrian. The Apartment Zero is populated by a multinational chorus who, individually, will give in to the stranger. Am I confusing you? Bits of Pasolini's Teorema as well as Harold Prince's Something For Everyone and at the same time light years away from both of them. A true original.

I saw this movie 25 years ago and liked it. I learned the movie trivia game that they play throughout the film and have played it myself many times over the years. This is a very good movie. What it tells the viewer is that there are many sides to each person. We are all multifaceted and can't be defined by a single characteristic. This is so different than current films that seem to instantly define characters. " He's gay, she's black, they are violent etc." It's probably my favorite performance by Firth. Bochner is also excellent and watching it again made me wonder why he never had a bigger movie career. All of the tools were there. It's definitely worth a look see. Highly recommended.

Hi, fellows. It´s great to read positive reviews on such peculiar film from the eighties. I watched it at the time on a video tape rented at a friend´s shop in La Lucila. She was smart to tip me as to our extremely local setting. Because, apart from all the achievements mentioned by other users, to me the moving thing about this moving picture is that the York has operated as a true cinema theatre for well over half a century in Olivos, next to a small lush square by the unfrequented Borges train station. Where us kids from the neighbourhood would go walking sunshine or rain to watch three films in a row. When my elder brothers first took me there, the way to the toilets was around a hen coop. Later in the seventies friendly ushers would let us pass to watch restricted films. To mention but a few films I saw there: The Wizard of Oz, You Only Live Twice, Cabaret, Julia, Yellow Submarine, Isadora. After staying closed for years following the theft of their projector in the eighties, in recent years the smallish York cinema house is owned and run by the Municipalidad de Vicente López and offers all films and live shows gratis.