Al compás
2013 · 14m · España
Directed by J.M. Asensio
Genres: dark comedy, experimental, satire
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, theatrical
Four employees about to be fired sit one by one before an implacable boss who judges them to the beat of a metronome, as a strange concert is about to begin.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A firing squad transformed into a metronome-synced performance piece—finally, someone who understands that corporate dread is actually *theater*, and that the worst moments deserve the strangest formal treatment. This is the kind of premise that makes other scouts nervous, which is exactly why it works.
Asensio channels a lineage of European absurdist cinema (Tati, early Haneke) while building genuine formal rigor around the metronome constraint—each interview becomes a measured, almost musical composition where rhythm itself becomes the instrument of power.
The decision to bind every interaction to the metronome's tick is the whole film—it's what transforms a familiar satire about labor into something genuinely unsettling, turning a cheap formal constraint into the exact pressure valve needed to make you feel the absurdity in your chest.