In New York, at least in its cinematic mythology, each person has a story to be told. When we see Mariana in the beginning of the film wandering through the city streets, stealing tips left on café tables, clinging on to her few belongings, this Argentinian young woman seems to move with no fixed direction, numbed even by the metropolis. It is only when she meets Renzo, an Argentinian student who gives her back the passport she lost, that she finds someone interested in listening to her. The two seem to share a certain existential apathy, to be afflicted by an emotional underdevelopment, present in their interactions with the people around them, isolating them from the world but bringing the two closer together. From many survival schemes in an unknown city emerges an unlikely union. The film by Agostina Galvéz and Francisco Lezama, first-timers at Curtas Vila do Conde, is punctuated by cold, detached language emulating the characters’ psychological state, which sometimes results in a peculiar sense of humour – as when Mariana faints because of having been disturbed – but that draws us near to their search for happiness, even if ephemeral. (JA)