Ábaco
2016 · 25m · España
Directed by Max Larruy
Tones: contemplative, tense
Hugo and Chloe have spent six years together in a relationship that looks perfect from outside. One night at home, Hugo sees a strange message on Chloe's phone, and doubt shakes the bond.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A relationship thriller where the inciting incident is a text message—it's the most millennial crisis of confidence imaginable, which either makes this a sly satire of modern paranoia or just another couple-in-crisis chamber piece, and I genuinely can't tell which.
Larruy's control of domestic space and the architecture of doubt recalls Haneke's formal rigor; the film understands that six years of texture can collapse in a single moment of suspicion, and it earns that catastrophe through measured mise-en-scène rather than melodrama.
The whole film pivots on how Larruy shoots the phone itself—the way it becomes a third character in the room, glowing with accusation—and that single object choice transforms what could be a banal premise into something genuinely unsettling.