La etimología del recuerdo
2021 · 3m · España
Directed by Juan Fleta
Genres: drama, experimental
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, surreal
Memories are images, concepts or sensations stored in our memory. Through an allegory of the sea and the clock test, the short shows the relationship of a couple in which she suffers a mental illness at an early age, and the importance of the memories they have shared.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
The sea-and-clock allegory feels a bit too on-the-nose for something that wants to be surreal—like the film is afraid you won't get the metaphor without spelling it out, which undercuts the whole experimental gesture.
Fleta situates memory loss within a formally rigorous visual language—the clock mechanism and tidal imagery create a lineage with structural avant-garde cinema while grounding it in emotional specificity, the kind of considered metaphorical architecture that rewards close viewing.
The decision to let the clock's rhythm carry the emotional weight rather than score it conventionally is what saves this; it's a small technical choice that transforms sentimentality into something austere and genuinely affecting.