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In Buenos Aires, overweight shop worker Marcia (Tatiana Saphir) consoles herself over her loveless existence with extended comfort eating. Then she meets Lenin (Veronica Hassan) and Mao (Carla Crespo), two punk lesbians who fall in love with her and decide to abduct her, spiriting her away in a stolen taxi to... the beach. Starting off as an edgy thriller before transforming into something far less expected, Suddenly hides a heart of gold beneath a fake tough exterior.

Unexpected contrivances are the rule in director Diego Lerman's first feature film, a fascinating example of how to keep an audience on its toes by delivering something far different than what's promised. It's a film that's full of surprises as characters and situations alter before our eyes with all the abruptness that the title implies.

After hijacking a taxi at knifepoint and travelling to the beach, the women end up in the city of Rosario, where Lenin has an elderly relative, Blanca (Beatriz Thibaudin). Holing up with Aunt Blanca and her two lodgers, Mao and Marcia develop a fitful affair while Lenin starts to re-appreciate the value of family.

"IMPRESSIVE DEBUT"

While it's apparently uninterested in what drives its street-tough lesbian anti-heroines, this meandering drama is full of incidental details and a belief that plot should be secondary to character. Not everything works, but it's an impressive debut that's already been compared to Jim Jarmusch's whimsical indie road movie Stranger Than Paradise (mainly because of its gentle pacing and sumptuous black and white cinematography). At heart, though, it's a very Argentinian piece of filmmaking.

Sketching the vagaries of the country's financial crisis with the lightest of touches, Lerman succeeds in creating a counterpoint to the world-weary pessimism of films like El Bonaerense and Nine Queens. By celebrating the importance of our relationships with others, it warns of the necessity of appreciating each moment before the cruel suddenness of life takes its toll.

In Spanish with English subtitles.