Cuestión de química
2007 · 18m · España
Directed by Juan Moya
Tones: contemplative, whimsical
Two pieces of news change Roberto's life: his girlfriend leaves him and a television report announces that the chemistry of love is down to a hormone, oxytocin; dazzled, Roberto decides to investigate the secrets of seduction, desire and love.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A rom-com that weaponizes pop-science neurobiology as a breakup salve is exactly the kind of premise that sounds like a sitcom until you realize it's actually a Trojan horse for something darker—though Moya doesn't quite commit hard enough to the weirdness to make it sing.
The film sits comfortably in a lineage of Spanish romantic comedies that interrogate desire through intellect, but its formal control—the interplay between whimsy and the clinical language of chemistry—never quite deepens into the kind of considered argument that would elevate it beyond pleasant genre exercise.
What works here is the decision to let Roberto's obsession with oxytocin become visual—the way the film mirrors his reductive thinking back at him through its own formal choices, making his pseudo-scientific pursuits feel both ridiculous and genuinely lonely with minimal resources.