Paco
2009 · 12m · España
Directed by Jorge Roelas
Genres: coming-of-age, fantasy, LGBTQ+
Tones: surreal, tender, whimsical
Jota goes out every morning in search of love: Paco, the spirit of love, who enters the bodies of the most handsome boys walking through the shopping centre — and Jota is the only one who can see him.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A shopping centre as the stage for queer longing and metaphysical pursuit—fine enough premise, but Roelas doesn't really *subvert* the coming-of-age machinery so much as gently recolor it; the surrealism feels more decorative than destabilizing.
The film's formal restraint is admirable: a 2009 short that resists sentimentality and holds its magical conceit at arm's length, treating the fantastical with the same observational patience as the mundane—a disciplined approach to tone that locates itself in a quieter lineage of queer cinema.
The invisible choreography of Jota's gaze—how Roelas builds an entire emotional architecture around what *can't* be shown, only witnessed—transforms a modest premise into something achingly specific; it's all economy and precision, every frame justified by the narrowness of that single point of view.