Regaliz
2014 · 6m · España
Directed by Álvaro Aránguez
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic
Three women presented as sisters gather around a cake with lit candles. Despite the setup, it is not the birthday of any of the three.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
The birthday cake setup is a trap—you're waiting for the saccharine reveal, and instead Aránguez lets the three of them sit in the wrongness of it, no explanation, just escalating absurdist dread. It's the kind of film that makes you uncomfortable precisely because it refuses to resolve into meaning, which is exactly why it works.
The formal restraint here—the static framing, the measured pacing, the refusal of melodrama—places Regaliz in a lineage of European minimalist cinema that trusts the audience's intelligence; the birthday-cake-that-isn't-one becomes a study in compositional tension rather than plot mechanics.
The single choice that carries this entire six minutes is the decision to keep the camera fixed and let the three actors inhabit the space without explanation or resolution—no cuts to save it, no sound design to manipulate it—just their faces and the lit candles doing the work.