Leer(nos)
2025 · 3m · España
Directed by albert rodriguez
Genres: drama, LGBTQ+, romance
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
On a bench in Barcelona, two women cross paths by chance; the book one of them is holding, 'Cómo hablar con las plantas' by Marta Orriols, becomes an excuse, a bridge, and a revelation through which they begin to share words, silences, and glances that bring them closer.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A tender bench-meet romance in Barcelona sounds like exactly the kind of festival circuit comfort food I'd normally skip, but Rodriguez seems genuinely uninterested in dramatic payoff—the film just *sits* with two strangers and a book about talking to plants, which is either the most boring thing ever or quietly subversive, and I'm still not sure which.
There's a deliberate restraint here that recalls the European minimalist tradition—Kiarostami's patient gaze—where a book title and the space between two bodies become enough architecture for intimacy; the editing knows when to hold and when to breathe, which is rarer than it should be.
The choice to make the book—that specific plant-communication manual—the actual emotional anchor rather than the women themselves is what breaks this open; in three minutes, Rodriguez trusts the object and the glances to do the work, and it's that confidence in restraint that makes the tenderness land.