Cefalea
2016 · 16m · España
Directed by María Sánchez Testón
Tones: absurdist, humorous, tender
Leo and Marcelino live in the village, are elderly and manage very well on their own, but their daughters and their grandson Toño, alarmed at a distance, are convinced they should spend their old age in a nursing home. To avoid leaving the home where they have shared their lives, the couple live a huge lie; this afternoon Toño comes to surprise them, and surprises and lies abound.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The premise is a Trojan horse—it looks like a cute family comedy about lying to avoid the nursing home, but Sánchez Testón is actually staging something weirder about performance, dignity, and how we become cartoons of ourselves in front of loved ones; the absurdism sneaks up on you.
A formally controlled exploration of domestic Spanish comedy with clear debts to the theater of manners, where the escalating deceits are choreographed with the precision of a well-wound play—the structure itself becomes the subject.
The entire film hinges on a single choice: playing the lie not as broad farce but as desperate, almost painful sincerity from Leo and Marcelino, which transforms what could be sitcom material into something genuinely tender and unsettling.