A la cara
2020 · 14m · España
Directed by Javier Marco
Genres: dark comedy, drama
Tones: darkly comic, tense
Pedro opens his flat to a prospective buyer and finds Lina, a famous television presenter who has no interest in the home. She has come to face one of the people who insult her on social media.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A confrontation between a celebrity and her anonymous troll that strips away all the expected catharsis—no redemption arc, no gotcha moment, just two people circling each other's need for validation in a cramped apartment. It's the kind of premise that makes you uncomfortable because it refuses to pick a side, and that's exactly why it works.
Marco positions this within a lineage of chamber dramas and social satire, but the formal restraint—the enclosed space, the measured pacing—occasionally overwhelms the thematic complexity; it's a film aware of its own construction, perhaps too aware.
The real architecture here is the sound design and the precision of the pauses between these two characters—the way silence becomes another voice in the room, and how Marco lets those gaps do the moral work that dialogue won't.