Tiempo al tiempo
2015 · 2m · España
Directed by Alex Vallejo
Tones: contemplative, melancholic
The film tells a story of a relationship where the same qualities that first drew the couple together later drive them apart. It focuses on endings and on loves that are denied and lost.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Two minutes of melancholic symmetry—it's competent, sure, but the premise of 'qualities that attract then repel' is basically every relationship film ever made, just compressed. Where's the perversity, the formal risk that makes me lean forward?
Vallejo understands the economy of form here: a 2-minute architecture that hinges on visual and tonal recurrence, where the same compositional language that generates intimacy becomes the grammar of dissolution. That's the kind of structural rigor that lingers.
The film's power lives in whatever single editorial or performance decision locks that cruel paradox into place—whether it's a match cut, a held gaze that reverses meaning, or a sound bridge that makes 'the same' feel like 'opposite.' That specificity is what elevates a premise into a film.