Ain’t that right
2018 · 7m · España , República Checa
Directed by Patricia Delso Lucas
Genres: dark comedy, surrealism, thriller
Tones: darkly comic, surreal, tense
An apparently harmless elderly couple run an antique shop through deceit and double-dealing; when a young customer walks in, unaware of the surreal trap awaiting him, he faces a grotesque choice that puts his life at risk.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
An elderly couple weaponizing whimsy and commerce into actual psychological horror — it's the kind of premise that makes you laugh and then immediately feel guilty, which means Lucas knows exactly what she's doing. Takes the cozy-shop-as-trap concept and twists it into something genuinely perverse, refusing the easy route of just being cute.
Lucas demonstrates control over the grotesque-comedic register that recalls the formal traditions of European dark comedy while maintaining tonal precision throughout; the film's discipline in not overexplaining the mechanics of its own surrealism shows a curator's hand aware of its lineage to Koreeda and early Haneke.
The film's entire architecture hinges on that decision to keep the couple's motivations ambiguous and almost *cheerful* — a single tonal choice that transforms what could've been a straightforward thriller into something that unsettles because it refuses to justify itself, and Lucas commits to it with complete conviction.