About Thirty

Buenos Aires in March 2020, just days before the outbreak of the pandemic. A wedding is being celebrated; a car overturns. The guests share joints, kisses, a blow job and the memory of a loss. At the centre of this comedy of errors is 30-year-old Arturo, played by director Martín Shanly. He is every bit as drawn to misfortune as he is directionless – qualities he shares with the remainder of the film’s characters. His faux pas and blunders stand in inverse relation to the finesse with which the film elegantly glides back in time from the wedding day to the 2010s. As episodes from Arturo’s life come to the fore – a bus trip to Patagonia with his trans housemate, a painfully awkward dress rehearsal for a play – narrative time is compressed and then extended again, all while a voiceover provides a steady counterweight to the tumult. As the hit song “Azúcar amargo” (Bitter sugar) comes on and the dancefloor fills, the bittersweet nature of the film comes across with every bit the same clarity as the coughing that proceeds it – elbow etiquette is still yet to materialise. (Berlinale)