El beso y la bala
2012 · 14m · España
Directed by Chema Villalba
Genres: crime, drama, thriller
Tones: dark, melancholic, tense
On night duty at a veterinary clinic, Zahara receives a call from her ex-boyfriend Rodrigo, who for once is neither drunk nor begging her back, because something violent and atrocious is happening in the city that will define their fates.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Everyone expects a revenge thriller when an ex calls with violence on the line—Villalba refuses to play that game, instead building dread through what *isn't* said, which is somehow more unsettling than any payoff could be.
The film's restraint and formal control—the way it holds the veterinary clinic as a hermetic space while chaos unfolds elsewhere—positions it within a lineage of Spanish crime cinema that values psychological pressure over spectacle.
That opening phone call, shot almost entirely in Zahara's stillness and reaction, does the entire thematic work: one performer's choice to resist melodrama transforms a genre setup into something genuinely haunting.