Letargo
2015 · 21m · España
Directed by Xavier Miralles
Genres: drama, LGBTQ+, romance
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
Álex has just separated from Marc, his partner of several years; on a cold winter night their dog falls ill and Álex takes it to hospital, reuniting the two in a long night where everything that seemed asleep wakes again.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone expects the breakup-rekindling story to milk the emotional reunion, but Miralles refuses—he lets the dog's illness be the actual plot, which is almost perverse in its restraint, and that's exactly why it works.
A formally disciplined chamber piece that trusts the grammar of long takes and negative space to hold emotional weight; the film situates itself deliberately in the lineage of European intimate realism, with editing that knows precisely when *not* to cut.
The decision to shoot almost entirely in the veterinary hospital's waiting room—fluorescent, unglamorous, real—means every glance between them carries the full weight of the separation; that spatial constraint is what makes the tenderness actually land.