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To open with an establishing drone shot has become something of a cliché for lower-budget films looking to create a sense of scale inexpensively, but in Argentinian director Verónica Chen’s fifth narrative feature “High Tide,” the choice feels unusually apt. The camera glides frictionlessly over an opaque turquoise sea, breakers foaming at its edges, and into a darkened beachside forest in which sits a large, modern, architect-designed house. The dispassionate sterility of the floating, impersonal image establishes the tone of Chen’s film: Whatever else it might be, it won’t be warm.

Inside the house, Laura (Gloria Carrá) a willowy and well-kept middle-aged woman, dances alone. Well, not entirely alone — three workmen watch from the partially built barbecue pit they’re constructing outside. Like a moth to a flame, the foreman, Weisman (Jorge Sesán) eventually slips into the living room and starts to dance with her. Book publisher Laura,...