La última función
2015 · 15m · Perú
Directed by Roberto Flores
Tones: melancholic, tender
Jorge works as a clown in a neighbourhood circus; being a clown is all he knows and wants to do for the rest of his life, but one day his boss informs him that he will have to sell the circus due to the low attendance of the public, and Jorge will fight to prevent the circus from being sold.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Everyone expects the sad clown narrative to fold into itself—instead Flores lets Jorge's devotion stay weird and unsentimental, refusing the easy catharsis that lesser films would've milked. It's a premise that could've been treacly, but the film's refusal to judge its protagonist's stubborn love of circus makes it genuinely strange.
There's a formal restraint here that speaks to the neorealist tradition—the melancholy emerges through what Flores doesn't show us, through the quiet spaces between Jorge's routines and the encroaching end. The tonal balance between comedy and elegy recalls a European sensibility about small lives and their dignity.
The revelation is the performance itself: watch how Flores uses Jorge's clown *face* as a mask that doesn't quite hide his desperation, finding the singular moment where a pratfall becomes a plea. That layering—the makeup, the gesture, the unspoken need—is what makes this work on fifteen minutes and a neighborhood circus budget.