SCHED: SF International Film Fest '08

Links: Event Details/ Who's going | Original Source
About: 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. Hector (Karra Elejalde) is a mild-mannered, middle-aged guy enjoying a relaxing afternoon with his wife (Candela Fernandez) 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 Hector'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.
Also playing on: Sat 5/3, 11:00 pm
Tags: spotlight: the late show