Chinese Take-Away 2011

Roberto, Ricardo Darín, is a veteran who measures the world in order, running his own hardware store with a relentless precision. He counts screws in each box, logs every discrepancy, and believes that a life built on control shields him from the chaos he suspects lurks beyond his carefully arranged shelves. To prove his point, he collects newspaper clippings about grotesque mishaps born from carelessness, turning his little shop into a quiet museum of the risks of a slipshod world. From time to time, Mari, Muriel Santa Ana, the woman who loves him and yearns to share a life with him, stops by, hoping to soften his stiffness with a promise of companionship.

Yet just when Roberto thinks nothing can surprise him, an appalling incident erupts before his eyes. A Chinese man named Jun, Ignacio Huang, is dumped out of a taxi right in front of Roberto. He steps in to help, trying to set things right, but communication between them is hampered by a complete lack of a shared language. Roberto, who is hardly in the habit of asking for help, finds the mission unusually strenuous as they stumble through a cascade of misadventures while trying to resolve Jun’s predicament. Their search for a translator leads them to a delivery boy from a Chinese restaurant who can bridge the gap between them.

Jun reveals that he came to Argentina in search of his uncle. Roberto, meanwhile, begins to understand that his own rigidity stems from a deeper wound: the Falklands War left him with a shattered worldview and a fear that the orderly universe he cherishes is, in fact, unraveling. To illustrate his point about a world that seems to have gone mad, he shows Jun a chilling newspaper clipping about a Chinese girl who was killed by a cow that fell from a moving aircraft. It’s a disturbing reminder that tragedy can strike in the most improbable ways, and Jun recognizes the echo of that tragedy in his own life—he had come to Argentina because everything in China reminded him of what happened to his fiancée.

As their odd alliance unfolds, Jun slowly connects with the uncle he’s been seeking, a journey that takes them to Mendoza. Roberto drives Jun to the airport, and Jun boards a plane to reunite with the relative he has hoped to find. In the wake of this farewell, Roberto attempts to slip back into his quiet, ordered world, but the experience compels him to journey onward to Mari’s hometown, where he hopes to locate her and, perhaps, redefine what order means in a life that has suddenly become unexpectedly unsettled.