“It’s beautiful…”
They say that variety is the spice of life. In a continuing attempt to embrace that variety here with One Movie | Each Day, I’ve decided to dedicate each Wednesday review to the stranger side of cinema, the type of movies that I’d never normally watch, or, at least, admit to watching, but that I’m kind of secretly glad exist. So, in celebration or in condemnation of the eccentric, the odd, the freaky, the kinky, the ghastly, the freaky, the fearful, the flaky, and the freaky, I now present a fantastic of the reason why this series was started in the first place, the twenty-third edition of Wednesday Weirdness.
Sometimes keeping this blog up every single day can be a bit of a drag, however every once in a while I do stumble across a film that makes me glad, not only that I’m doing One Movie Each Day, but also glad that I started the two special features that today’s entry falls into, Wednesday Weirdness and Winter Shorts.
The express purpose of me starting Wednesday Weirdness, (for those of you that stopped reading that introductory paragraph twenty-some installments ago, is that I wanted to expand my cinematic horizons and watch the weird, sometimes dark, sometimes sexy, sometimes flat out strange films that I never would watch otherwise. Today’s movie is one such example.
A mildly erotic, slightly cerebral, non-linear, Mexican, surrealistic sci-fi/fantasy short, directed by someone I’ve never heard of, and featuring a cast of two, (with a grand total of five other IMDb credits between them), there’s no way on Earth that I’d have seen Recursivo without this blog providing a reason. I’m really glad that I did.
It’s not the greatest film that I’ve ever seen. In fact, as I write this, I haven’t even completely decided how I’m going to rate it. However, on at least some levels I really loved this film. It’s beautifully shot, and neatly constructed. It’s a little bit titillating, but largely tasteful, and it ends before it gets tired.
In the film, two young women, Sandra (Bianca Flores) and Claudia (Gimena Gómez) awake naked in a small bed in a strange bedroom. They have no memories, no idea how they got there, and they don’t even recognize each other. Worse, they seem to be trapped in this room, with no way out, and no way to tell if what they’re experiencing is even real, or some sort of a dream.
The film is beautifully shot. Writer/director Aram Vidal primarily uses a hand-held camera that slips in and out of focus, creating a dreamlike atmosphere of confusion and doubt, however he occasionally cuts to a hard-camera observing the room slightly from above, infusing the dreamlike world with a note of paranoia or danger.
This is one of my favorite entries in the Winter Shorts series, but I’m not sure how broad its appeal will be. It does get fairly not-safe-for-work at points, there’s some nudity, but it’s tastefully done, and not at all gratuitous. Still, depending on one’s temperament I could see the whole thing coming across as disturbing, and not necessarily in a good way. For that reason, I’m going to have to say it falls short of being a “Must See.”
Recursivo is not a movie that really makes a statement, it’s provocative but it’s not going to challenge anyone’s beliefs. It’s simply a piece of art. In the eyes of this beholder it’s a beautiful piece of art, but your mileage may vary. Still, at only nineteen minutes, it’s absolutely worth seeing.
[Recursion (Recursivo) - Directed by Aram Vidal - Not Rated]
