Las Vegas
2018 · 23m · España
Directed by Juan Beiro
Tones: contemplative, darkly comic
Ana finally meets Lola, her new boyfriend's mother. But Lola is not willing to make things easy for her: she has more important matters to attend to, such as reuniting with her past.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The premise reads like a sitcom setup—new girlfriend meets boyfriend's mom—but Beiro completely subverts the expected beats by making Lola's indifference the actual point, which is refreshingly hostile to narrative comfort.
A formally composed character study that understands the genealogy of relationship comedy while refusing its reassurances; the restraint in the direction recalls a lineage of European social comedies that prize awkwardness as aesthetic principle.
The entire film hinges on the calibration of Lola's performance—that specific temperature of distraction and dismissal that makes Ana's vulnerability sting without ever becoming sentimental; it's a masterclass in doing everything through presence rather than exposition.