Photo: Michal Rosa's El Custodio

El Custodio is almost pathological in its compositional marginalization of protagonist Ruben (Julio Chavez), an Italian government minister's bodyguard who's so disconnected from those around him that he occupies only a subsidiary role in his own life. Argentinean director Rodrigo Moreno rigorously employs doorways as confining framing devices, using them as a means of highlighting both Ruben's detachment from those he's charged with protecting (via glimpses of the minister and his family's private actions spied through half-opened entrances) as well as his inherent smallness and powerlessness (via claustrophobic visual arrangements). This last point is also conveyed by aerial shots that reduce him to a mere speck on an asphalt driveway, as well as by the film's strict adherence to Ruben's point of view, which captures, for example, the embarrassment he feels when the minister (Osmar Nunez) asks him to entertain poolside guests with sketch portraits (like some kind of party clown), and then he passively stands by as the group lightly mocks him in impenetrable French.  Nick Schager