La risa de las mariposas
2017 · 15m
Directed by Regla Peinado Elliott
Tones: contemplative, whimsical
Call-center worker Alegría, worn down by pressure and stress, turns to an unusual coach whose therapy she follows in her own way, regaining her balance unexpectedly.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The premise wants to be quirky—burnt-out call-center worker finds salvation through an unconventional coach—but it lands in the safe middle ground between drama and comedy without really committing to either. I expected the film to interrogate why we need coaches at all, or to invert the therapy narrative entirely; instead it just lets Alegría find balance and call it a day.
Peinado Elliott demonstrates careful control of tone, moving between the fluorescent suffocation of the call center and moments of genuine lightness that recall the European art-cinema tradition of finding grace in mundane spaces. The editing rhythm supports this tonal duality with precision, though the film never quite commits to exploring the formal lineage it seems aware of.
The film's real coup is the decision to keep the 'coach' largely off-screen or abstracted—we experience Alegría's shifts through her own reorientation to sound and space rather than through mentorship moments—which transforms what could've been a generic self-help narrative into something about reclaiming your own sensory autonomy on a call-center floor.