Melancólicos Rock Band
2019 · 20m · España
Directed by Beatriz Delgado, Juan Bascuñana, Miguel Solo
Genres: comedy, coming-of-age, drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
Recently divorced lawyer Pablo Ros spends the summer in his hometown with his daughter Celia and his mother Leonor, reconnecting with his school friends Pepa and the Ramones, driven by nostalgia and the need for change.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A nostalgia-soaked Spanish summer film about middle-aged divorce and reformed rock bands should be unbearable, but Delgado and Bascuñana keep it from curdling into sentimentality—there's an unsentimental eye here that subverts the genre's natural softness.
The film positions itself thoughtfully within the lineage of post-vacation-realism cinema, with a formal restraint in its editing and a refusal to resolve the melancholia it documents; it knows what it owes to Rohmer and Haneke.
The decision to cast actual musicians as The Ramones and let the rhythm of their rehearsals—not dialogue—carry the emotional weight gives this modest production an authenticity that justifies every frame; it's a film built on sound design and timing rather than budget.