Playback
2014 · 15m · España
Directed by Nico Aguerre
Tones: contemplative, dark
A man waits in his hotel room for a young prostitute whom he has just hired on the internet; when she arrives, the man explains to her in detail how he has got to there.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Most films would shy away from the real meat here—the confession, the slow unraveling of how a man ends up in a hotel room—but Aguerre leans INTO the discomfort instead of exploiting it, which is somehow more unsettling and infinitely more interesting.
A rigorously constructed chamber piece that recalls the philosophical interrogations of early Haneke, using spatial constraint and monologue as formal devices to examine complicity and desire; the restraint is everything.
The entire film hinges on Aguerre's decision to keep the camera still and let the actor's confession accumulate weight through sheer verbal texture—a barely-there production choice that transforms what could be lurid into something genuinely haunting.