(In)-Comprehension
2015 · 7m · España
Directed by Adrián Vereda
Genres: experimental, fantasy, romance
Tones: contemplative, surreal, tender
A spark between two young people is cut short by their inability to communicate, speaking different languages, until the enigmatic Mr. Paré enters with a message from perhaps a life that has not yet taken place.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A romance that gets *ruined* by language and then resurrected by temporal paradox—this is the kind of premise that makes you go 'wait, WHAT?' and actually stick with it. Most scouts would've stopped at 'two people can't talk to each other'; Vereda doubles down into something genuinely subversive about desire and causality.
The film's formal restraint—its refusal to exploit the language barrier for easy pathos, and its measured pacing toward the entrance of Mr. Paré—places it in a lineage of European experimental cinema that treats romance as philosophical rather than emotional. A carefully constructed meditation on communication that earned its place in the festival circuit.
The single choice that makes this work is casting or performance in that moment between the two leads—a glance, a gesture that communicates everything their different languages cannot—and then the audacious decision to *undo* it narratively, which on a seven-minute budget is remarkable restraint.