A Few Feet Away review – Buenos Aires slacker tries to balance app life and real sex in vivid hookup drama

Tadeo Pestaña Caro’s debut feature trails a young man’s compulsive screen time and his panic when faced with real intimacy

In the age of online hookups, signals of attraction – once felt in a significant look or a brush of the hand – are now transmitted by way of screens.

Laying bare the gamification of dating, Tadeo Pestaña Caro’s probing debut follows 20-year-old slacker Santiago (Max Suen), lost in a cycle of thwarted desire in Buenos Aires.

Whether at his dead-end job at a call centre or lying awake in bed, he is glued to his phone, hungrily swiping through various dating app profiles.

A sea of naked torsos and bulging crotches surge across his screen, each promising a passionate encounter and perhaps something more.

Caro’s film captures this obsession with striking psychological precision.

There’s a paradox to Santiago’s compulsive behaviour, which is at once all-consuming and distracting.

Faced with the illusion of choice, he can’t help swiping even when he’s on a night out with his coworker Karen (Jazmín Carballo), who plays a big-sister role to the restless young man.

Santiago’s real-life conversations are punctuated with the constant pings of new messages, offering dopamine rushes that leave him wanting more.