FILMS/
TIMECRIMES
Los cronocrímenes
Spotlight: The Late Show
Spain, 2007, 90 minutes
SHOWTIMES
Sat, May 3 / 11:00 / Kabuki / TIMC03K
Wed, May 7 / 9:45 / Clay / TIMC07Y
CREDITS
- dir
-
Nacho Vigalondo
- prod
-
Esteban Ibarretxe, Javier Ibarretxe, Eduardo Carneros
- scr
-
Nacho Vigalondo
- cam
-
Flavio Labiano
- editor
-
José Luis Romeu
- mus
-
Chucky Namanera
- cast
-
Karra Elejalde, Bárbara Goenaga, Nacho Vigalondo, Candela Fernández
- source
-
Magnolia Pictures, 115 West 27th Street, 8th Floor, New York, NY 10001. FAX: 212-924-6742. EMAIL: MCowal@magpictures.com
The first feature from acclaimed shorts filmmaker Nacho Vigalondo offers viewers the useful reminder that traveling through time to erase one’s mistakes is never a wise idea. Héctor (Karra Elejalde) is a mild-mannered, middle-aged guy enjoying a relaxing afternoon with his wife (Candela Fernández) when a strange phone call interrupts their tranquility. Shaking off the weird premonition it elicits, he heads to the lawn for some bird-watching. When his binoculars alight on a pretty girl removing her top in the woods, he decides to investigate, thus setting a twist-filled plot in motion, and sealing his fate. Without revealing any of the story’s delicious complications, let it be said that our poor protagonist meets up with, at turns, a scissors-wielding man with a bandaged face, a mad scientist who holds the key to time travel and a mysteriously vacant building where the Blondie song “Picture This” plays hauntingly. And that girl from the woods? She’ll play a terrible part in Héctor’s undoing. Though the film rewards close attention—several scenes are replayed from another character’s perspective—it is also effortlessly suspenseful, continually imaginative and wickedly comic. With nods to time-travel fare like Primer and Back to the Future, and a villain straight out of a giallo film, it’s clear Vigalondo is a movie buff unafraid to roam confidently across genres even as his protagonist, who should have stayed on his lawn looking for ruby-throated warblers, tumbles haplessly through time.
—Rod Armstrong
Presented with support from Fred Phillips. West Coast Premiere. Sponsored by Stella Artois.
