Mara-maravillas
2017 · 5m
Directed by Álvaro Robles, José Prats
Tones: absurdist, contemplative
Maravillas works as a cleaner at the high school where Maravillas once studied. Life changes after a discovery under chewing gum stuck to a desk.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The premise dangles absurdist bait—a discovery under gum at a desk—but the film seems to want to *mean* something about return and stagnation, which lands it squarely in the expected dramatic lane. I wanted it to go weirder.
Two directors managing a deliberately constrained space—the high school desk as mise-en-scène—with enough compositional care that the mystery unfolds through form rather than exposition; the contemplative tone suggests a lineage with quiet European character studies.
The single decision to anchor the entire narrative around an object found under a desk—making the absurdist detail do all the emotional work—is what transforms what could've been maudlin nostalgia into something genuinely unsettling and precise.