La mujer invisible
2017 · 15m · España
Directed by Noemi Chantada
Genres: drama, surrealism
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, surreal
A young woman lives in a small flat in Vigo, marked by a sadness that sets the woman apart from other people of the same age. Each evening, the woman changes clothes, changes name and changes skin to face another night.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The premise promises surrealism but the nightly costume-and-name swaps feel more like illustrated metaphor than genuine strangeness—it's the kind of melancholic indie that thinks it's weirder than it actually is.
Chantada situates this squarely in the lineage of Spanish minimalist cinema, with careful attention to domestic space and the visual grammar of isolation; the formal restraint is admirable even if the emotional payoff remains at arm's length.
The decision to make the transformations mundane rather than spectacular—just a woman changing clothes in a small flat—is what makes the surrealism land; that refusal to heighten the visual turns the whole thing into something genuinely unsettling.