Dácil
2008 · 17m · España
Directed by Adrián Silvestre
Genres: coming-of-age, drama, LGBTQ+
Tones: contemplative, tender
Dácil and Roberto, Fine Arts classmates, see their relationship begin to transform when Simón, their video-art teacher, sets them a self-portrait as their final project, using video as the medium of expression.
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Dácil plays it almost too safe—a tender LGBTQ+ coming-of-age that feels like it's been made a hundred times before, even if Silvestre executes it competently. The video-as-mirror conceit never quite becomes the subversive tool it could be; instead, it just confirms what we already suspect about desire and self-discovery.
Silvestre places this intimacy firmly within the pedagogical tradition of the self-portrait, letting the video assignment become both narrative engine and formal constraint, and the result is a film aware of its own relationship to art-school cinema—measured, reflective, and properly situated in that lineage.
The camera decision to shoot the boys' video-art self-portraits in real time, unbroken and unflinching, transforms what could have been montage sentimentality into genuine vulnerability; that formal choice—just letting them look, unbuffered—is what makes the emotional weight actually land.