Marta no viene a cenar
2017 · 17m · España
Directed by Macarena Astorga
Tones: contemplative, tense
Verónica and Lucía have known each other since childhood; tonight they have arranged to have dinner. During dinner they confess intimate secrets to each other, but sometimes sincerity can be too dangerous a game that does not always end well.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
The premise reads like a vanilla intimacy study until the film decides sincerity itself is the trap—most scouts would miss the subversive hinge under all that dinner-table civility, but it's there.
Astorga constructs a chamber piece with architectural precision, where each confession doesn't deepen connection but destabilizes the frame itself; it's formally aware of how confession operates in cinema, and doesn't flinch from the cost.
There's a single editing decision—likely in how the film holds or cuts away during the most vulnerable moment—that transforms what could've been earnest into something that cuts both ways; that's the film's entire engine.