Vive y deja vivir
2016 · 16m · España
Directed by Paco Sepúlveda
Genres: coming-of-age, drama, fantasy
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, whimsical
Jaime is a boy eager to take on the world, but realising things are not as he imagined he has fallen apart; learning that a woman in the neighbourhood reads cards, sees the future and cleans bad energies will change his life.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A coming-of-age film that leans on tarot mysticism instead of the usual self-discovery clichés—genuinely weird choice—but it doesn't push hard enough into the strangeness; the whimsy feels like a safety net rather than a provocation.
Sepúlveda's restraint in handling magical realism within a classical coming-of-age structure shows formal discipline, though the film sits comfortably in a well-worn lineage without asserting a distinct position within it.
The decision to let the neighborhood tarot reader remain peripheral—a catalyst rather than a sage—reframes the entire story around Jaime's own agency in choosing belief, and that narrative architecture does real work on a modest budget.