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9/10
Captures the hard part of loving with heart and humor
13 August 2016
What a strong debut! Jonas Trueba shows great confidence in handling that tenuous place in loving someone else from a place of ego without making our hero Ramiro (Oriol Vila) obnoxious or completely pathetic. The acting is great all around. There's a nice influence of Francois Truffaut going on with a few, sparse but insightful moments via voice over and an active camera that moves to the great jazzy score by Perico Sambeat. It builds toward a wonderful open- ended finale, following a heartbreaking monologue by Ramiro to his unreachable(?) love Andrea (Bárbara Lennie), which melds nicely with Sambeat's pièce de résistance: a chaotic yet moving instrumental. One of the best endings I've seen in a long time. It also recalls (500) Days of Summer without jumping back and forth through time. There are also jabs at other kinds of relationships -- from the purely superficial to the naive to apathetic-- and, bonus, lots of great jokes about the book store world where Ramiro works. This is a rich, well-drawn out film that hardly ever slacks, as it never compromises what a complex, inner problem it's trying to express. You should come in ready to tune into that wavelength and have some experience behind you to get these moments. Maybe I'm seeing at the right time.
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