Equals
2019 · 20m · España
Directed by Javier Yáñez Sanz
Genres: dark comedy, drama, romance
Tones: contemplative, darkly comic, surreal
A couple who met through a dating app become inseparable and share everything, until the man grows uneasy when his partner starts resembling him so closely that he no longer recognizes himself.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A dating app romance that curdles into identity horror—the premise alone is a middle finger to every rom-com algorithm, and Sanz actually commits to the surreal body horror of it rather than winking at the audience. This is the kind of film that makes people uncomfortable in exactly the way they should be.
Sanz positions himself within a lineage of body-transformation cinema (Cronenberg echoes, certainly) while maintaining formal restraint; the editing resists melodrama even as the premise demands it, creating a productive tension between the grotesque and the measured.
The entire film hinges on a single recurring shot—watching the man's face as he recognizes his own features emerging in hers—and the micro-performance choice in that moment of non-recognition does all the psychological work a $2M production would need a score and montage to accomplish.