Tayuan

Tayuan is a 2016 Argentinian film that delves into the complex and uncomfortable dynamics between two characters, Ella and Rico. The movie begins with Ella, a driven and ambitious events project manager, stuck between saving up money and catching a convenient ride on a private transportation service. However, on one fateful night, she's forced to take a crowded bus, where she unwittingly finds herself sandwiched between Rico, the bus conductor, and other passengers due to the suffocating crowd. The visceral and deeply intimate encounter on the bus leaves Ella shaken, but it also stirs something within her, igniting a spark that she can neither explain nor ignore. As the days go by, Ella becomes consumed by memories of Rico's rugged exterior and his rough demeanor, which captivated her. It is this curiosity about Rico and the lingering image of their bodies pressed together that sets off a chain reaction. Ella's fixation on Rico grows, and soon, she starts to play a passive-aggressive game of seduction. Her primary goal is to make Rico want her just as fervently as she wants him. Despite Rico's courteous nature and intentions as a bus conductor, Ella launches aggressive pursuits that blur the lines of consent and ultimately, respect. It is not just Ella who is driven by dark or misplaced desires. However, but Rico does indeed have his own thoughts about their chance encounter on the bus. Rico in his own thoughts does show introspection of what could be a first blush romance, he questions why Ella seems so intent on focusing solely on their chance encounter. However, things become more complicated when Ella eventually discovers that Rico not only lives with his partner, Berta, but also has an adorable nine-year-old daughter. The revelation blindsides Ella with a pit of unsettling emotions. Instead of pulling back, making peace with reality or attempting to confront the profound differences between their circumstances, she only seems to intensify her pursuit of Rico. Tayuan seeps into a dark and captivating narrative that ventures further down the uncharted and less visited romantic terrain. The viewer sees Rico subjected to constant, unreasonable advances from Ella and enduring a crushing blend of guilt, confusion, and humiliation as he seeks ways to navigate and safeguard the relationship and the balance she disrupts. The interactions elicit an outpouring of volatile expressions through a tight dynamic display, the tone slowly plunging into an awkward dance of self-imposed anguish that appears so hard to walk away from. Rico walks a tightrope - weighing the possibility that Ella may not be beyond saving - against the risk of falling more deeply for her. Meanwhile, Ella navigates an eerie realm where unchecked ambition, frustration, and obsession dance with dangerous force and emotion. As these opposing emotions come head to head in a dance of power in Rico's world, a dark fusion takes over that carries huge emotional costs. With every passing episode, things grow unbearable as Rico grows increasingly uneasy in living through every stage within this increasingly toxic romantic game. Despite appearances, Rico wrestles with what appears to be an underlying romantic attraction toward Ella of his own, though weighed down by a genuine duty to take care of those he’s bound by sworn commitment to in terms of a love both unconditional and true. This obsessive game of will becomes a push-pull war, charged by fear on every level, full of regret, full of awkwardness – altogether, a film that doesn't hold back – pushing boundaries much further than what we're prepared to look at in film.