Mousy Marta is the quiet girl in the corner of every house party. She lives with her ailing mother in a small flat, goes to night school, and fantasizes about the dreamy guy in the apartment across the street who hangs his underwear out the window to dry. Over the course of an afternoon, spent painting a friend's apartment, Marta is reintroduced to the self-involved people in her circle. Two sis­ters argue, Marta's saucy best friend Elisa and bitchy Jimena who stole Elisa's boyfriend. Fer and his wife Carmen bicker over her ticking biological clock. Anorexic Alicia throws up her lunch in the small bathroom. And sweet Nestor can't seem to get over his failed relationship with Marc. Of course, everyone con­ fides in Marta and she, having no life of her own, keeps their various confidences.

Brief home movie collages combine sto­ries and images from each character's child­ hood to vividly flesh out their individual moti­vations and vulnerabilities. Like a Spanish ver­sion of Whit Stillman's Metropolitan, most of the conversation in Marta and Surroundings takes place around a kitchen table where the articulate characters wittily air their gripes about growing old and facing commitment and eloquently reveal their desires.