A mysterious intruder arrives in a Buenos Aires insane asylum, ostensibly just another madman who claims, with unnerving sincerity, to be a holographic image projected from another planet. His mission (so he says) is to study the superweapon with which mankind threatens the cosmos: not The Bomb, but simple human stupidity. It might sound familiar, but don't mistake this modern Passion Play with science fiction. The film instead presents an intriguing philosophical dialogue between the 'madness' of the title character and the troubled sanity of Dr. Denis, a lost soul himself after serving too long the needs of the mentally ill. If there's a fault to the scenario it would have to be the lack of ambiguity about the stranger: Dr. Denis remains skeptical, but the audience is never in doubt of his otherworldly origins. A little ambivalence might have added some dimension to the sanity/insanity debate. The uneasy mood of the film was achieved by shooting it (in subdued shades of color) within an actual mental institution.
Review of Man Facing Southeast
