El poema
2019 · 18m
Directed by Adrián Álvarez
Genres: coming-of-age, drama, family
Tones: contemplative, tender
Rebellious teenager Jesús, who lives with his widowed mother, must spend time with his grandfather Don Víctor, and the forced cohabitation teaches him the real meaning of family.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A premise so earnest it borders on parody—widowed mother, rebellious teen, wise grandfather—and yet Álvarez somehow refuses to wink at the audience, which is either profound restraint or the thing that nearly sinks it.
The film sits comfortably in the lineage of European family dramas, with particular echoes of Haneke's patient observation, though whether it earns that company or merely occupies the same formal vocabulary remains the question.
Álvarez makes the crucial choice to let silence and duration do the work instead of dialogue or score—the teenager's resistance lives in what *isn't* said, which transforms a stock setup into something genuinely earned.