Ermyntrude y Esmeralda
2007 · 16m · España
Directed by José Miguel Alonso Gómez
Genres: comedy, historical, romance
Tones: absurdist, theatrical, whimsical
Ermyntrude and Esmeralda are two Victorian teenagers in search of true love; their exaggerated, frivolous naivety entangles them in a rollicking succession of amorous and sexual misunderstandings.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
On the surface this is exactly the kind of twee period-comedy pastiche that makes me want to sleep, but Gómez is actually weaponizing Victorian melodrama against itself—the 'frivolous naivety' isn't played straight, it's a Trojan horse for something weirder underneath.
A sharp formal exercise in comedic restraint and theatrical tradition; Gómez positions Ermyntrude and Esmeralda within a clear lineage of absurdist romance while maintaining the compositional discipline that keeps the whimsy from collapsing into mere cuteness.
The real architecture here is in how Gómez lets the misunderstandings *accumulate* rather than reset—each comedic beat compounds the last, and the precision of that rhythmic choice on a 16-minute budget is what transforms this from costume-party comedy into something genuinely propulsive.