La tendencia Dostoievski
2005 · 12m · España
Directed by Suso Hernández
Genres: dark comedy, drama
Tones: darkly comic, theatrical
Superchof, a failed clown endlessly mocked by the wicked showman Lorenzo Bello, gets his chance when a sudden encounter turns the mocker into the mocked.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A failed clown getting humiliation flipped back on his tormentor should be crowd-pleasing garbage, but Hernández commits to the theatrical grotesquerie so completely that it becomes something genuinely unsettling—the kind of dark comedy that makes you uncomfortable for laughing.
The film's debt to commedia dell'arte and theatrical tradition is evident in its deliberate staging and tonal control, though the 2005 digital format and editing choices occasionally undercut the formal precision one might expect from a premise this carefully constructed.
The entire film hinges on the performance choice to play Superchof's transformation with theatrical restraint rather than broad catharsis—that decision to hold back makes the role reversal land with actual weight instead of cathartic release.