La Escapada
2017 · 10m · España
Directed by Javier Noriega de Lara
Genres: drama, LGBTQ+, mystery
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tense
Emma, a businesswoman in existential crisis, goes alone to an orchestral dinner at a prestigious winery. A meeting with Alicia, a young cellist, reveals an obscure secret shared by both women.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A winery dinner mystery with a secret reveal feels like it's checking boxes for prestige drama, but I'd need to see what twist actually subverts the whole 'two women, one confession' setup—and I suspect it doesn't.
Noriega de Lara constructs a precise chamber piece where mise-en-scène (the winery, the cello, the formal dinner) becomes syntax for emotional disclosure; the film's restraint and compositional control suggest a filmmaker aware of how Haneke or Koreeda use space to withhold and reveal.
The casting of a cellist as Alicia rather than an actor suggests the director trusts performance authenticity over polish, and that choice—letting a musician inhabit rather than perform vulnerability—is what grounds the secret-sharing in real, specific body language instead of script mechanics.