Óscar desafinado
2014 · 22m · España
Directed by Mikel Alvariño
Genres: dark comedy, fantasy, romance
Tones: darkly comic, theatrical, whimsical
Jokingly, Violeta tells her boyfriend Óscar that, if she dies first, he must wait at least 2 years before going out with another woman, and that, if he does not do so, she will return from the grave to take revenge; shortly after, Violeta dies, and Óscar meets Ana…
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A ghost-revenge rom-com that treats a woman's supernatural jealousy as both punchline and genuine emotional logic — most scouts would've played this straight or safe, but Alvariño leans into the absurdity and *means* it, which is exactly where the real subversion lives.
The theatrical tone and darkly comic register feel indebted to a specific strain of European magical realism, though the execution occasionally prioritizes whimsy over the formal precision that would elevate it into the conversation with Jeunet or Vigo.
The central conceit lives or dies on whether you buy Violeta's return as both genuinely threatening and genuinely funny, and Alvariño commits to that tonal suspension so fully—never winking, never breaking—that the whole film's modest budget feels irrelevant to what's actually happening on screen.