Tam Tam • Les intrigues de Sylvia Couski

"For a few months - the time it took to film 'Tam Tam,' Adolfo Arrieta's underground film, the film with the most transvestites per square foot in the history of cinema - most of my social interaction was with transvestites. [...] What Arrieta was actually making was punk cinema in the French style, and with its apparent excess of realism he was years ahead even of his compatriot Almodóvar. 'An excess of realism. In the transvestite there is an enhanced femininity (women imitate them), but Arrieta just directs them as actresses, without insisting on excessive cosmetics or the easily flamboyant aspects of the situation,' Severo Sarduy wrote about the film."
- Never Any End to Paris, Enrique Vila-Matas

“Tam Tam shows desire and repression through the subversion of archetypes both social (ambassadors, stars, artists) and sexual (homo- philes, transvestites, transsexuals), and converting these into a most accurate account of a certain kind of unease: an identity crisis. [...] Arrietta proposes a dazzling vision of these micro- universes as seen from within, from the very place of their oppression: an admirable example of cinéma-vérité confirmed by the tireless search for new levels of expression.”
-Raphaël Bassan, Cinéma Différent