CHARACTERS

BILLBOARD INSTALLER. Viggo Mortensen.

Physiognomy_ Male. Argentine. Around 55-60 years old, mature. Certainly attractive. He has large, strong hands. Slightly bearded, with a day's worth of stubble and disheveled hair. Wearing jeans and a t-shirt. Denim jacket or leather jacket with style. With a deep gaze and a genuine smile. A man of few words, but with a face that says it all: he is passionate. He is passionate about the large billboards he hangs from great heights and about good movies.

Sociology_ Billboard installer. High-altitude specialist. He works for advertising companies, hanging large advertising posters on the mega-structures atop buildings on 9 de Julio Avenue. He is obsessed with large eyes and giant faces. He has been hanging posters for over 15 years because he likes to see everything tiny from up there. He wanted a job that would make him detach his feet from the ground. He believes that from up there, the only reality is right in front of his nose, and that is the only thing that interests him. He takes notice and becomes entranced by the grain in the photograph, the texture and roughness of the canvas, the quality of the print, and stretching those large images gives him both aesthetic and physical pleasure. Everything has to be precise, fitting perfectly, like the work of a surgeon on a large scale. It is a pleasure that is close, intimate with the material that resists being controlled and staying fixed on a gigantic structure. A pleasure that is at once dangerous, vast, and beautiful, fascinating, and showy. So, his work absorbs him into the scale and magnitude of reality, a daily world that remains down below, small and insignificant, where the only reality he gets into is that of movies. Because since he was young, he has had the vice and necessity of going to the cinema, to travel through a large screen, an acrylic canvas that is familiar to him, of the same magnitude as the images he hangs. But he is sad because he sees that the world of large images is disappearing, and that little by little, screens will dominate the heights, bright and impertinent. His work consoled him for the loss of his father and he transfers his great passion for the dark big screen to the city day and night as a great urban intervention.

Not having his feet on the ground is something he likes. He has never sought stability because he has chosen to live in the clouds; up there, he has them close, and everything from high above looks both small and distant, while he also sees everything as too large and too close. The heights have made him solitary and a dreamer. He is an only child, born to very strict and cultured parents. His father was a famous surgeon, and his mother was an actress. When he was young, they took him to the movies, where he would see his mother large and imposing on the screen. Unfortunately, his mother took her own life by jumping out of a window, due to harassment and the situation she found herself in after having an affair outside of her marriage. He felt the need to continue going to the movies, to lock himself in the darkness of the vast movie theater, safe and sheltered from the outside world, to travel to other realities, alongside his father. It was the only thing his father allowed him to do, watch movies. Otherwise, his father was strict in his education and upbringing. So, he was forced to study medicine to integrate into his father's famous medical practice. His father was a prestigious surgeon from an early age. After he qualified and had been practicing with his father for a few years, and unhappy though he was, he never liked medicine; in reality, he felt incapable of healing someone. Suddenly, his father fell ill with a very rare disease, and he could do nothing to help him, so medicine became his downfall.

He was then defeated and dejected. He left the scalpel behind for the world, wandering aimlessly through distant countries for a long time until one day he arrived in New York. There, many advertising posters caught his attention. So now, after 15 years of hanging posters, he lives isolated from the world in his own world in the heights. He returned to Buenos Aires and the cinema to watch movies.

And he will fall in love with the blind girl who lives in a small house next to his. Every day, he sees her poking her head out of the window with her fluffy white cat. Their hands will meet in a movie theater seat, and he will fall in love blindly.

Psychology_ He is extremely passionate and appears solitary but has a fear of commitment. He is emotionally fragile, making him a sweet, delicate, and sentimental man. He protects himself from that by hanging from the heights and isolating himself from the world below because he detests being seen crying. He is often moved, easily emotional, and very passionately passionate. He is afraid of falling in love because he also sees himself capable of, out of love, jumping out of a window as his mother did. Perhaps he needs to make the leap from up there, from the heights, to definitively land with his feet on the ground. A liberating way to turn the page.

BLIND GIRL. Anya Taylor Joy.

Physiognomy_ She is an Argentine woman, around 35 years old. She has delicate, white skin and very large, white eyes. Her straight hair falls to her shoulders in a messy half-mane. She dresses in strange, loose-fitting clothes with very bright colors. She has the habit of playing with her hair, making loops or braids with her fingers. She walks by tracing everything with her fingers, moving slowly but with a steady gait, and keeps her head down, avoiding making eye contact with people she cannot see.

Sociology_ She has been dedicated to the world of cinema for several years. She discovered that even without sight, she can go see movies and imagine them by creating their sounds, music, little noises, footsteps... She is a sound director, a Foley artist, and a film composer. She came back to Buenos Aires from Los Angeles, where he was living for a while. She lives in a small house on top of a building, a hotel owned by her uncle. Her three siblings work in her uncle's family business, in the hospitality industry in branches outside the country. Her parents live in the countryside, but she never liked the restaurant business. She has an artistic talent. She is the odd one, the rebel in the family, the nonconformist, the dreamer. She is sensitive and fragile, born with a serious eye problem that worsened over the years, causing her to lose her sight. She has a lot of Victoria sneakers in many colors under her bed, and she takes different ones each day, mixing and matching. She likes to listen to music on cassettes because of their irregularities and texture, a compilation of different kinds of music, and she has the habit of rewinding the tapes with a BIC pen; she does it when she is nervous, to relax, like an old lady knitting. She enjoys talking to her cat, who follows her everywhere in the house. However, she doesn't know what color her cat is; she found it as a little kitten on the street one day, and no one ever thought to ask. So she will take the opportunity to ask her billboard installer.

Psychology_ She has a great sensitivity. She has the habit of walking and tracing everything with her fingers. She likes to love a lot, sometimes too much. She is very affectionate, friendly, kind, sincere, and even in her condition, she retains the hope and desire to live forever. With a great positive attitude that emanates from within. With a great sense of humor in the face of life and what she has gone through. She believes in coincidences and chance, and is convinced that everything happens for a reason. For some reason, she found her cat, for some reason, it's too hot, for some reason, she ended up in a movie theater seat with a big, attractive hand... a strong hand that will hold her and she knows will save her from everything.

YOUNG CATALAN COUPLE. Daniel Brühl and Úrsula Corberó.

Physiognomy_ He is about ten years older than her. He will be around fifty and she around forty. Both are quite tall; he is not very thin and she is slenderer. He has short, gray hair styled in a very Lynchian upward spike. They both dress in a modern style, with colors ranging from white, black, and gray. She has tan skin with an intelligent face and her hair is shoulder-length, with bangs dyed in a copper color. They dress in monochrome, but they always wear a detail in a very bright color (now sneakers, a watch, or a necklace).

Sociology_ They have just arrived in Buenos Aires from Barcelona to open a branch of the agency they have in the Catalan city. It is an advertising agency, and they now want to supply new markets in Latin America. Things are not going very well there, and they need a change of scenery. They have thought about staying for a while because their apartment in Barcelona has become too small for them. He has big expansion plans, brilliant business ideas, and a very powerful client in Buenos Aires with whom they are starting the eye campaign. So, he quickly bought land in one of these "country" areas near the capital to build their new home. But she doesn't see it all too clearly; everything seems too disorderly, too dirty, too big, and the distances become evident. She starts to disagree about everything. And it's too hot. They almost have the house finished to move in, but they are missing something: a pool. In Catalonia, they have left not much behind, just the apartment that her brother will occupy and their respective parents. But he does not know that back in Barcelona, she left something else: a lover.

Psychology_ They are very overwhelmed. They are overwhelmed by the asphalt heat of Buenos Aires. She hates not knowing what to do or where to go. Not knowing the environment provokes hostility and rebelliousness towards her partner, her business partner, her husband. She is the creative one, the one with bright ideas, and he is the operational brain, with a clear head and a visionary when it comes to business. He is quick, independent, and takes the initiative to carry out all the ideas that come to her mind, even the idea of moving to Buenos Aires, fleeing. They complement each other in a surprising, perhaps even distressing, unhealthy way. One cannot do anything without the other, and they know it. They have created a machinery that cannot be broken. Because of this, he believes that the initiative to change the air, the country, the world, to continue succeeding, was his. He is very anxious; she is too benevolent. Once here, alone together, will they still love each other the same? She will decide whether to stay here or leave definitively with her lover. She thinks it is too difficult to live far from home, but she realizes that they only have each other.

Now it's done, they are already there, and they have to try to find their place in the world. Meanwhile, they are looking for someone to dig a hole in the ground to plant a pool for them. Water is an essential, vital element for them; it will refresh their ideas and help them endure the asphalt heat. And finally, after a big crisis, a big and pleasant soak in the pool while it pours rain, will make them realize that they are madly in love with each other.

PRE-FABRICATED POOL INSTALLER. Ricardo Darín.

Physiognomy_ Man. 74 years old. Argentine, son of Catalan immigrants. White hair, beard and mustache and dark skin, sunburned. He wears a very dirty visor cap stained with dirt and with an embroidered inscription: "soak your dreams", worker gloves and overalls. He has a medium-sized yellow excavator. He is agile, but he does everything in a relaxed manner, even when he is on the excavator. He pauses before starting a conversation, first he observes you. He does not ask questions, and directly says what he thinks. He talks a lot, in a very reflective way and with self-criticism.

Sociology_ Pre-fabricated pool seller. But they are custom-made prefabricated pools, designed to measure and in the shape that you want. The business is his and he is dedicated to making holes and filling the voids. He spends all day there at the pool stop, in the middle of nowhere on the road, thinking, waiting. And watching his favorite classic movies on VHS, in his small trailer. He is a big movie fan and adores a particular Argentine actress. Three or four pools are exhibited there, standing so they can be seen from afar, showing their interior shape, and one is on the ground but without water, in the shape of a male member, very Dalinian. His parents were Catalan immigrants, who upon arriving in the country in the 1930s set up a bakery business. He went to school until he was 14 when he started working in the workshop. The early morning work hours did not let him study further. His parents needed young hands to knead the bread. He continued during the 80s, after the death of his parents, until 2000. With the crisis and tired of a lifetime of family business, he sold the bakery. With the 2001 crisis, one day still intoxicated after a night of revelry, he bought an excavator, an old trailer, a Siambretta and a piece of land in the middle of the Pan-American Highway. He has been digging holes, moving the earth for many years, and that makes him think a lot. He fills the void that he in turn creates, with unimaginable shapes. At the end of the movie, he fills the pool that has been empty for years and puts all the family photos, his past, and immerses himself with and in his memory. He feels like he's drowning in his memories and he doesn't know how to swim.

Psychology_Serene, calm, nostalgic. He is an existentialist. He thinks that we are nobody and that we return to the earth from which we came, but his problem is not knowing the origin. He already feels old, aimless, and alone. The mere fact of emptiness terrifies him, and he often imagines drowning in a black and unknown hole. Holes in his own existence that he tries to dig and fill with pools full of fresh water. Water is freshness, calmness, and serenity for him, his return to the origin. The problem is that he doesn't know how to swim.

WHITE CAT. Ushuai.

Physiognomy_ A white cat, with long, fluffy fur. Its tail is like a pompom and a radiant white. Behind the ears, it has some very cute little hairs. The ears and nose are a delicate shade of pink. It has large eyes, one blue and one yellow. The nose is slightly elongated and pink.

Sociology_ When he was very small, he was abandoned on the street. He meowed a lot for a day and a night until a blind girl passed nearby and, very scared, he screamed with all his might to be rescued. The blind girl heard him, approached, and picked him up from inside a shoebox that had been abandoned on top of a bush. Since then, he has lived with her in a little house at the top of the terrace, where they have magnificent views of the city, and where he spends hours at the window looking down: smelling, listening, seeing, and touching the thread of the blind with his paws.

Psychology_ He is extremely intelligent, but very nervous and curious. He never stays still, following the blind girl through all the rooms, upstairs and downstairs, all day long, because he is afraid of being abandoned again. He has a surprising curiosity for water, for a cat. He is madly in love with it.

(preferred cast, subject to confirmation)