Los comediantes
2014 · 15m · España
Directed by Miguel Azurmendi
Genres: dark comedy, experimental, satire
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, theatrical
Girl and boy play at being delinquents assaulting the house of a wealthy old lady; girl and boy play at loving and not loving each other; girl and boy play at transforming themselves into decadent martyrs of pop; girl and boy play at being Psycho Killers; girl and boy play at creating their own comedy.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A film about performance as a way to dodge authenticity—kids cycling through poses (delinquents, lovers, pop martyrs, killers) like it's all the same joke, which is exactly the point. Azurmendi refuses to settle the tone or give you a thesis, and that refusal is what makes it dangerous.
The theatrical tableaux and recursive structure situate this clearly in a lineage of meta-comedy and absurdist performance art, though the editing's restraint in letting scenes play out fully demonstrates considerable formal discipline beneath the chaos.
The decision to hold on the actors' faces during these rapid persona shifts—watching them *try* to commit to each new identity without cutting away—is what sells the entire premise; it's the physical labor of performance that grounds the abstraction.