El pelotari y la fallera
2017 · 22m · España
Directed by Julio Médem
Mar, a Valencian cook devoted to avant-garde cuisine, meets Unai, a Basque chef devoted to traditional grilled steak, during a summer holiday. Despite being opposites, a spark grows between them, and distance later tests their love story told in three acts.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Médem's done the unthinkable here—made a romance about regional food traditions *not* insufferable, which means he's either a genius or I'm losing my edge; either way, the three-act structure is almost too clean for my taste, but the Basque-Valencian dialectic as love metaphor is too clever to hate.
A masterclass in formal restraint: Médem positions culinary philosophy as emotional language, and the symmetry of opposites-attract through the lens of Spanish regional identity recalls the precision of mid-career Erice or early Almodóvar—the editing knows exactly when to cut away from sentiment to let the food speak.
That single choice to let the grilled steak and avant-garde plating do the actual emotional heavy lifting instead of dialogue—to make technique itself the love language—is the move that transforms what could've been a tourist-board rom-com into something that actually *means* something on a 22-minute budget.