From Afar

A chilly, stylistic drama from Venezuela, From Afar serves up an oddball relationship story involving two extremely different people who fill a hole in each other's lives, although their partial intimacy is not enough to bridge the social and economic divide between them. Alfredo Castro plays Armando, a closeted gay single man with old, unresolved wounds concerning his father and an addiction to hiring male hustlers to pose semi-nude for him. We meet Armando in one of writer-director Lorenzo Vigas's more interesting visual flourishes, as the camera slowly tracks the middle-aged man (who repairs dentures for a living) wandering through a crowd with an almost sociopathic disregard for the personal space of strangers. Later, he picks up Elder (Luis Silva), a teenage thug with barely human impulses, and what happens is not good: Elder punches out Armando and steals his wallet. Much to Elder's shock, Armando finds him again and asks him back to his place. A startling bond develops between the pair in this portrait of two people stuck in their individual lots in life, with little room to break free. Recommended. [Note: DVD extras include director Lorenzo Vigas's 2004 short film “Elephants Never Forget” (13 min.), and trailers. Bottom line: a solid extras package for this intimate drama.] (T. Keogh)