Servicio técnico
2016 · 12m · España
Directed by Javier Fesser
Tones: darkly comic, tense
A woman is stressed, expecting guests for lunch. When she is most rushed, with little time to prepare everything, she receives the unexpected visit of a man who will end up stressing her out completely.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The premise sounds like a sitcom setup, which is exactly why Fesser's decision to let it curdle into genuine dread is so perverse—he takes the housewife-stress trope and refuses to let it stay comfortable, and that refusal is the whole film.
Fesser works squarely in the Spanish comedy-drama tradition, and this sits neatly between Álex de la Iglesia's genre-twisting sensibility and the formal restraint of domestic-space cinema; the tonal control is exact.
It's the choice to keep the camera locked on her face during the interruption—no quick cuts, no relief—that transforms what could be a five-minute sketch into something that actually *feels* like losing your mind, and that discipline is what makes twelve minutes land.