Director: Nacho Vigalondo
Writer: Nacho Vigalondo
Cast: Karra Elejalde, Barbara Goenaga, Nacho Vigalondo
Runtime: 92 mins.
2007
Timecrimes, or
Cronocrimenes, is a Spanish time-travelling film about a rather normal middle-aged fellow who stumbles into a rather abnormal temporal scenario. This fellow Hector (
Karra Elejalde) begins the film by relaxing with his wife in the yard of his new home. As he is scanning the woods through binoculars for some unspecified reason, he spies a young woman in the woods who is calmly stripping for, again, no apparent reason whatsoever. Of course our hero investigates this mystery, whereupon he discovers the woman (
Barbara Goenaga) lying naked and unconscious. He approaches her slowly, only to be stabbed in the arm by a bandage-faced individual with a pair of scissors. This startling development leads him to seek shelter in a strange complex, and make contact with a mysterious scientist (
Nacho Vigalondo) who coaxes him into a large machine filled with white, milky fluid, ostensibly as a place to hide from the bandage-faced dude. Well, it's a time machine. So ends the first act.
I'm not one for recaps-as-reviews, but it's kind of impossible to talk about this movie without some knowledge of the plot, because that's really all there is to it. The acting isn't anything special. The production values aren't anything special. What themes there are are fairly straightforward, and rooted firmly in the plot. The real draw of this film is how flawlessly it realizes its time travel scenario, careful to iron out all wrinkles as it speeds along.
