En Alabama, sí
2015 · 14m · España
Directed by Pablo Lapastora
Genres: crime, dark comedy, satire
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, provocative
The best way to get rid of an inconvenient corpse is to dump it on a deserted outer road, set it on fire and pull out its teeth so forensic dentists cannot identify it — in Spain the last step is unnecessary, but in Alabama it is.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A premise so deranged it shouldn't work—a how-to guide for corpse disposal that pivots on the absurd bureaucratic specificity of Spanish vs. American forensics—and yet Lapastora swings it with the deadpan confidence of someone who knows exactly how ridiculous he's being. This is the kind of film that makes you laugh and uncomfortable in the same breath, which is exactly where subversion should live.
Lapastora's formal control over tone—the way he sustains the deadpan delivery without winking at the audience—situates this within a lineage of European dark satire that knows its own tradition; the film's restraint is what gives the premise its cutting edge, refusing the easy laugh in favor of something more architecturally sound.
The entire film lives or dies on the decision to play every single beat of criminality advice with the flat, instructional tone of a tax seminar, and that tonal choice—that refusal to perform the darkness—is what transforms a one-liner premise into something that actually breathes and sting.