Ext – Parque – Noche
2019 · 8m · España
Directed by Ernesto Valverde
Genres: drama, LGBTQ+, romance
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
Irene and Naty, both screenwriters, meet once again to finish writing their short film. Irene wishes to reveal to Naty what she feels for her; lacking the courage to say it face to face, she will do it the best way she knows: through her characters' dialogue.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
It's a competent meta-romance about writers writing romance, which is exactly the kind of self-aware nesting that usually collapses under its own cuteness—except Valverde doesn't wink at the camera, and that refusal to perform is genuinely subversive.
The film understands its lineage in intimate queer cinema and meta-textual storytelling, executing the nested narrative with formal precision; the dialogue blur between fiction and confession reads as both technically assured and emotionally earned.
The entire film pivots on a single choice—letting the boundary between Irene's screenplay and her confession dissolve so completely that we can't tell where vulnerability ends and character begins—and that one decision transforms what could've been clever into something aching and real.