Synopsis
"The story begins where it is likely to end." The first line said in this film directly reveals Ossang's intentions. It's a world that doesn't have the beginning nor the end where the front and the back, the original and the imitation can't be discerned, where the uncertainty rules. The stage is a Latin American city where such an uncertainty is alive. With this background where the spirit of Borgese and Bioy Casares still breathe, Ossang displays a couple on the run in a noire style.
The key character's name is Angstel, a combination of angst (fear) and angel. He used to be a writer aspirant but now works as a smuggler of fake artworks. The smuggler ring is uncovered and he is chased by ring leaders. Angstel waits for Zelda in front of a movie house where "Murnau's Aurore" is playing. She doesn't show up. Then a woman named Ancetta runs into Angstel in the street. She is a stripper and prostitute. Angstel buys her for a fistful of fake banknotes, kills the assassin sent to him by the ring leaders, takes money from his mother and runs away.
"Language makes my thoughts cheap," Angstel utters desperately. He is trying to grasp the chasm between words and what they are referring to, and this attitude encourages him to pursue a life of moments, a life that thoroughly depends on chance. As an artist failure, he has come to think that only action can become art. By uniting the popular and the metaphysicl, this film reminds the viewers of Godard's Pierrot le fou. Like the pierrot that evaporated under the sizzling sun of the Mediterranean, Angstel ends his life in some mountains in Latin America, telling the viewers that "an absolute adventure" is impossible to achieve in this world. (Jae-chol Im)