Las cuatro estaciones
2024 · 30m · España
Directed by Marta-Cora Castro
Genres: coming-of-age, drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
Four friends are graduating, and on graduation day they promise each other that no matter what happens in their lives they will meet every 4th of the first month of each season of the year. And they do: in each season they tell each other about their experiences; in autumn life has an unpleasant surprise for them, and their affection for each other is indestructible — an ode to love and life.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone loves a four-seasons-of-friendship montage, so naturally Castro buries the hook until autumn arrives—but even then, the film refuses to break its own tender rules, which is either restraint or a missed opportunity to actually upset something.
Castro locates herself precisely in the lineage of cyclical coming-of-age cinema—Céline and Julie, Before trilogy structurally—and executes with formal discipline: each seasonal return is a measured accumulation of small betrayals and steadfastness, the editing patient enough to let affection become the film's true architecture.
The entire film hinges on Castro's choice to keep the camera relatively still during the reveals, letting the actors' silences and micro-adjustments do the work—it's a budgetary constraint turned into emotional precision, where what's *not* cut into is as important as what is.