Ad Absurdum
2024 · 1h 27m
Skip it. This sounds like pretentious art-house fever dream territory—all existential dread and philosophical posturing with no clear payoff. Unless you're specifically hunting for obscure European cinema that prioritizes atmosphere over narrative clarity, you'll spend the night feeling as trapped and tedious as the characters themselves.
Plot
Augusto and Santino, two budding civil servants, are mired in total failure in their lives and in the political career they are pursuing. This has led them to an existence full of uneasiness that sinks them deeper and deeper into total and soporific tedium. They both frequent a place called The Chicago Club, where sordidness invades the atmosphere and time stands still. Anton, an evil man, collaborates with Augusto and Santino and helps them to fulfill the fantasies that both wish to carry out night after night: «to achieve absolute power», and «to remember past loves», among other delusions. One night, the stakes between Antón, Santino, and Augusto grow along with the game they take to the limit. The characters get lost in their delusions, the insults become real, as well as the pain, the anguish, the hate, and their obsessions, all this in a single night where tragedy inhabits it: the excitement touches the bottom and death appears, it becomes an ally of power.