The dry rain
2014 · 14m · España , Estados Unidos
Directed by Guillem Gutiérrez Saura
Genres: drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic
Laura has been in a coma for over a year, and her husband Jack, overwhelmed by the situation, is about to make the hardest decision of his life.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
The premise reads like a Hallmark hospice scenario, which is exactly why I'd normally pass—but Saura's refusal to sentimentalize the decision, his willingness to sit in the unbearable gray space rather than resolve it neatly, actually *subverts* the thing it appears to be.
A formally restrained meditation on euthanasia and marital obligation that locates itself squarely in the European arthouse tradition of moral cinema—the kind of short that trusts negative space and sustained takes to do the philosophical heavy lifting.
The entire film pivots on a single choice: the decision to keep the camera on Jack's face *after* he's made his choice, refusing the catharsis of a reaction—that one cut carries the entire weight of the film's emotional architecture.