La madre
1995 · 16m · España
Directed by Miguel Bardem
Genres: dark comedy, drama, thriller
Tones: dark, darkly comic, tense
A man wants to kill his despotic, embittered mother but loses his sanity in the attempt.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A 1995 Spanish film that treats matricide as the setup for a psychological unraveling rather than the payoff — subverting both the thriller and the dark comedy in one move by making sanity loss the actual plot. Most scouts would skim past the premise; that's exactly why it's here.
Bardem's restraint in the mise-en-scène and editing rhythm suggests a conversation with European psychological cinema of the period, though the tonal mixture requires formal precision to keep from collapsing into exploitation or farce.
The film's central gambit — whether it pivots on a single performance choice from the lead, a sound design decision that erodes reality, or an editing cut that tips us into unreliable narration — is the hinge that determines if this is a gimmick or a genuine study of fracture.