The Original
2019 · 13m · United Kingdom
Directed by Michelle Garza Cervera
Genres: drama, sci-fi, thriller
Tones: contemplative, dark, melancholic
In The Original, we focus on Alana, a woman whose partner, Gwendolyn, is in the final stages of locked-in syndrome.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Locked-in syndrome as sci-fi thriller sounds like a Terrence Malick fever dream someone actually executed, but the premise overshadows what I suspect is a fairly conventional intimacy-in-crisis structure—I'd need to see it resist its own melodrama to bite.
Cervera composes an exacting study in constraint and presence, where the grammar of cinema itself becomes the language of a body that can no longer speak—the formal rigor of shooting someone locked in demands a visual philosophy few directors attempt, and this one clearly has one.
The real move here isn't the premise but whatever intimate spatial and performative choice she made to render locked-in syndrome as *felt* rather than explained—that's where the 13 minutes either transcends or collapses, and I'd bet Cervera found it in a specific cut or a held glance.