Ornitorrinco
2017 · 3m · España
Directed by Iván Martín Ruedas, Sara Bamba
Tones: darkly comic, tender, tense
Two women have just ended their relationship but meet for a family meal where they will keep pretending to be a couple; if one of them cannot keep up the farce, there is a code word: Ornitorrinco.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Everyone expects the breakup film to either wallow or explode—instead these directors just let two people sit at a table and negotiate their own extinction with a fucking safeword, which is more subversive than any plot twist could ever be.
The film understands its debt to Kore-eda's small-scale intimacy and Rohmer's conversational precision, executing a three-minute study in performance restraint where what isn't said becomes the formal argument itself.
The entire film hinges on the rhythm of glances—the way Ruedas and Bamba cut between the women's faces to measure the distance they're pretending doesn't exist—and that single editorial choice transforms a premise about pretending into something genuinely aching on almost no resources.