Verano o Los defectos de Andrés
2006 · 21m · España
Directed by Jorge Torregrossa
Andrés and Sara have known each other a short time, while Félix and Silvia have been together five years; the two couples spend a hot summer afternoon at a pool, and Andrés begins a game of seduction towards Silvia that will tense the atmosphere and provoke Sara's jealousy.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone expects the seduction to blow up into melodrama, but Torregrossa keeps yanking the rug out—the real poison is in what *doesn't* happen, the glances held a beat too long, the game that never quite declares itself. It's frustratingly restrained, which is exactly why it works.
A formally controlled chamber piece that inherits from European psychosexual drama while earning its place through rigorous mise-en-scène and a final act that restructures our understanding of desire without a single raised voice. The poolside setting becomes a pressure cooker precisely because Torregrossa refuses to break the surface tension.
The whole film pivots on a single choice: the camera stays level and almost voyeuristic through the seduction, never cutting closer, never letting us inhabit anyone's perspective—which transforms what could've been conventional jealousy into something stranger and more complicit.