Smoking Room

Co-directed by an Argentinian and a Catalan, this seductive serio-comic city conglomerate drama comes over as a cross between TV's The Office and a guerilla-style experimental soap satire. Fernández plays the ever fuming - in both senses - Ramírez, instigator of a petition for an office smoking room following a ban from the Spanish company's new corporate American owners. The directors trace out the zany characteristics of a a typical half-dozen or so employees in a series of medium shot, hand-held sketches, catching not only the bizarre rituals of office life and politics, but the language and manners used metaphorically in expressing deeper dissent and misunderstanding. Not entirely successful, but often extremely funny and thought-provoking.