La historia 253536
2022 · 20m · España
Directed by Óscar Parra de Carrizosa
Genres: drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic
Father Luis has spent too long asking himself too many questions; on Christmas Eve afternoon, the parish priest of Santa Catalina delivers bitter news to his parishioners: that night there will be no Midnight Mass in Vegas de Guadarrama.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A priest canceling Christmas Mass is the kind of premise that should detonate—but Parra de Carrizosa treats it with such measured gravity that the subversion gets swallowed by solemnity; I'm frustrated by how safe this plays it, even when the subject matter begs for bite.
The film's restraint is its discipline: a single afternoon in a Spanish parish becomes a study in clerical doubt and congregational silence, the kind of formally composed chamber piece that recalls the European art-house tradition—Bresson's priests haunt this, and the editing knows exactly when to hold and when to fracture.
The decision to keep Father Luis's crisis interior, letting it register only through his measured voice and the town's gradual realization, transforms what could be melodrama into something weightless and true—that withholding is what makes the small moment of his announcement land.