Los ilusos

Young people in turtlenecks sit around in bars and cafés, discussing the end of film and human life. This could have been an excellent parody of French existential dramas, but The Wishful Thinkers doesn’t want to parody anything. Like a parody, however, it allows its characters to repeatedly step out of the narrative and draw attention to the artificiality of the world that they inhabit. Through the dialogue, breaking of the fourth wall and the technical limits of the film medium (the characters sit behind glass, so only the sound of the street can be heard rather than what they are talking about), we are made aware of the inseparability of the fictional world and the world in which the fiction is created. Despite a certain forcedness in the constant highlighting of the cinephilic qualities of the film, which, in addition to traits of the French New Wave, adopts some of the characteristic features of the Barcelona School (improvisation, episodic structure, jump cuts, “literary” division into chapters, the use of written texts, the impression that some scenes are missing, while the narrative flow comes to a complete halt in other scenes), The Wishful Thinkers gradually won me over with its sincerity and spontaneity both in front of and behind the camera. To reject such films on principle would mean taking it for granted that immediacy and imperfection today necessarily mean posturing. Maybe so, but I would like to foolishly believe that The Wishful Thinkers is more “cinematic” than more run-of-the-mill and commercial productions, not because of its belief in its own importance, but because of its creators’ love of cinema. 75% (23.02.2014)