Pollo a la mandarina
2015 · 9m · España
Directed by Julián Waisbord
Genres: drama
Tones: contemplative, tense
After a long day at work, a couple meets again at home and argues about sensitive questions affecting their lives before taking a decision that can no longer be delayed.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
It's a domestic argument film—the kind of thing festivals get fifty of—but Waisbord refuses to break the tension with music or convenient camera movement, which is either rigorous or punishing depending on your threshold for watching people sit with discomfort.
A quiet successor to the Dardenne lineage of intimate social realism, constructed with formal restraint; the decision to delay the 'decision' until the final moments elevates what could have been a standard kitchen-sink drama into something closer to Bresson's economy of gesture.
The film lives or dies on the couple's ability to sit in silence without collapsing the scene, and their refusal to perform—the micro-hesitations, the glances that don't quite connect—makes a nine-minute room feel like a pressure chamber with nowhere to hide.