El monstruo sobre la cama
2021 · 21m · Argentina
Directed by Alejandro Luna
Genres: coming-of-age, drama, fantasy
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
Lucia is a 10-year-old girl with a life that is difficult to bear for that age, with a dysfunctional mother as her only guardian; although she seems a lonely girl, she hides a friendship with a somewhat peculiar friend, who will give her the courage to face monsters worse than monsters themselves.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The imaginary-friend-as-coping-mechanism premise is well-trodden enough that it needs a real bite to matter, and I'm not convinced this one has it—the melancholy tone plays it safer than a film about a kid surviving dysfunction should.
Luna's restraint in the mise-en-scène recalls a lineage of Latin American coming-of-age work that trusts atmosphere over plot mechanics, and the formal balance between the mundane and the fantastical shows architectural awareness of genre tradition.
The decision to keep the 'peculiar friend' at arm's length—present but never fully explained—transforms what could be sentimental into something genuinely unsettling, and that restraint is what makes the emotional payoff land rather than feel earned.