Woody y yo
1981 · 19m · España
Directed by Manuel Valdivia
Genres: comedy, fantasy, surrealism
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, whimsical
After being rejected outside a cinema, a young man is given a pair of glasses by a stranger who says they brought him luck; when he puts them on, Woody Allen himself speaks to him.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A 1981 film where Woody Allen becomes a literal hallucination dispensed by a stranger's magical glasses—it's too weird and self-aware to work as straight comedy, too sincere to land as parody, which is exactly why it works. This is the kind of premise that makes you go 'wait, WHAT?' and then immediately want to see what Valdivia actually does with it.
Valdivia positions himself squarely in the lineage of Latin American magical realism and absurdist cinema, but the invocation of Woody Allen as a tutelary spirit feels more reflexive homage than formal investigation; the film's lightness works against any deeper meditation on influence or mimicry.
The entire film hinges on a single decision: to make Woody Allen himself the voice in the glasses rather than a parody or echo, which forces the actor to navigate the uncanny valley between impersonation and channeling—it's a performance tightrope that either lifts this modest premise into something genuinely unsettling or collapses it entirely.