Ex lege
2014 · 20m · España
Directed by Alejandro Manzano
Tones: contemplative, dark
In a world that lives on appearances, a woman hides her terrible secret to the ultimate consequences, while noble people stand aside before the unjust acts of the wicked.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
The premise *sounds* like moral theater, but Manzano seems genuinely interested in the gap between what people say they believe and what they'll actually tolerate—which is messier and less satisfying than the subversive takedown I'd expect, and maybe that's the point, but I'm not entirely convinced he's earned the ambiguity.
This sits firmly in the European art-cinema tradition of moral reckoning—the kind of formally restrained drama where a single secret becomes the mechanism for exposing a society's rot—and Manzano's refusal to grandstand about it, letting the consequences unfold with contemplative precision, marks it as work aware of its own lineage and purpose.
The real work here seems to be in what Manzano *doesn't* show: the film trusts its actors to carry the unbearable weight of complicity and silence, and there's likely one moment—a glance withheld, a conversation not had—where the entire moral architecture of the piece clicks into place on nothing but a choice to underplay.