Km. 0 (Kilometer Zero) ----------------------
On a day that's 115 degrees in the shade, five couples agree to meet in Madrid. Marga (Concha Velasco) nervously calls an escort, Miguel (Jesús Cabrero). Silvia (Mercé Pons) is meeting a young director, Pedro (Carlos Fuentes), from out of town. Dancer Bruno (Victor Ullate, Jr.) makes an Internet date with Maximo (Armando del Río, "Jamón, Jamón) while a nervous clerk calls hooker Tatiana (Elisa Matilla). Only one of these couples will meet their intended at "Kilometer Zero."
Writer/directors Yolanda García Serrano and Juan Luis Iborra guide a large cast to delightful performances where every character leaves his or her mark. While low budget restraints are suggested by the mostly tight interior locations, leaving the viewer no more familiar with Madrid at the end of the film than the beginning, one is still propelled into a world of ever hopeful humanity looking for love or at least a big break.
Marga succeeds in finding her gigolo, but she finds something on his person that would suggest he may be more known to her than she would like, sending her to a neighborhood bar to receive advice from bartender Mario (Tristan Ulloa, "Sex and Lucia"). Mario's fiancée Amor (Silke) is out and about making final wedding preparations, but is robbed three times in one day, leading her to a rather explosive meeting with a passionate police officer (Roberto Álamo). Good thing her sister Roma (Cora Tiedra, "Savages"), who works with Mario, seems to have more than future sister-in-lawly affection for him. Young director Pedro is swooped up by Tatiana, thinking he's her john, and, in the film's most delightful relationship, form a type of "My Fair Lady/Pretty Woman" bond. Pedro's actress Silvia spies famous musical director Gerardo (Georges Corraface, "Escape From LA") and leaps in front of his car to get an audition, which she ends up delivering in Mario's bar to great applause. Maximo finds Tatiana's john and becomes the shy clerk's oddball guardian angel while Bruno hooks up with Miguel's romantic roommate Benjamín (Miguel García) who happens to wander into the meeting place at the right time.
This type of romantic roundelay has certainly been done before, but "Km.0" is so spirited and its characters all so worth investing in that it is a delightful picture from start to finish. The writing/directing team have cooked up a story that has equal measures of humor and poignancy, enlivened by frank sexiness that crosses genders and generations. Elisa Matilla plays the type of good natured, low rent hooker that cinema has given us before in films like "Never on Sunday" or "Nights of Cabiria." Matilla is practical, and where we hope for romance for her, her own desires are met by hiking up her asking fee (and, therefore, her esteem) and she charms us when she gets her wish. Fuentes is like a young, unformed Antonio Banderas with his puppy dog appeal and unusual outlet for social reforms. Mercé Pons struts her stuff with a Juliet death scene that makes people weep followed by a show stopping Spanish rendition of Cabaret's "Maybe This Time." Armando del Río is hilarious as the gay man who guides the virginal clerk into the ways of love. Velasco and Ulloa provide an audience and commentary to the proceedings as everyone finds their way to Mario's bar.
"Km.0" ties all its crazy strands together as mistaken identities are uncovered and everyone ends up somewhere to the left of where they had intended, proving that when things don't work out as planned, there really may be silver linings after all.
B
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