AAOI: Asociación de Amantes de Objetos Inertes
2012 · 7m · España
Directed by Alejandra Rollán, Curro Granados, Pablo Macías
Genres: comedy, experimental
Tones: absurdist, contemplative, whimsical
A curious, fictional Association of Lovers of Inert Objects gathers people whose love fixes on things without life. Devotion to objects stretches the meaning of loving.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A fake club for people who fuck inanimate objects—played completely straight, shot with deadpan Spanish precision—is exactly the kind of premise that makes consensus programmers twitch. Most scouts would file this under 'too weird,' which is precisely why it works.
The film's structural restraint—its refusal to wink at the camera or exploit its absurdist premise—places it in dialogue with Buñuel's commitment to formal control in service of unsettling ideas, though the execution lacks the philosophical weight that tradition demands.
The decision to cast real devotion in the faces of people describing their relationships to objects, without irony or performance flourish, is what sells the whole conceit; that single tonal choice transforms what could've been a sketch into something oddly moving.