Pin Boy
(Parapalos)

Ana Poliak tell the story of Adrián, a young man who arrives from the provinces to work in Buenos Aires. Immediately, in the extraordinary opening sequence where a stark naked Adrián is awaiting the medical check-up without which he will not be allowed to work, we find the key to the film: the body and its labour power. Adrián finds a job in local bowling alley but, before he starts, he has first to be trained by his peers. The geometrical precision of the mise-en-scène is surprising: the bowling lanes serve as a perimeter that fixes a physical and symbolic distance between those who play and those who work. Poliak’s sensory intelligence consists in revealing to us the reverse shot of the game: it also involves observing the corporal habits of the workers as much as listening to the discourses through which they interpret their work. Roger Koza