Anita
2013 · 20m · España
Directed by Josema Roig
Genres: coming-of-age, drama, romance
Tones: contemplative, sensual, tender
On an ordinary summer day, Rodrigo watches Anita drifting in the communal pool, her mind elsewhere, and that night they meet again in a very different place where teenagers play at being grown-ups.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
It's competent coming-of-age romance, sure, but there's nothing here that shouldn't exist—no strange angle, no formal risk, just two kids and a pool and the expected nocturnal payoff. Roig's playing it straight when the form demands he break something.
A measured, elegantly restrained portrait of adolescent desire that locates itself in a lineage of European coming-of-age cinema—the spatial and temporal jump from day to night, from public to private, carries real formal intention and emotional weight.
The genius is in that single compositional choice: holding Anita adrift in the pool, unfocused and interior, then matching that weightlessness against the adult world she enters that night—one decision that makes the whole film's tension between observation and surrender actually *work*.