Espejismo (2014) User Reviews

A breath-taking journey through grieving

[mmdv46 · 8/10 · 14 March 2015]

Espejismo takes us through the inner journey of Daniel, a depressed painter who has suffered the loss of his parents as a child and now deals with the loss of his grandmother too. As Daniel starts to push away the real world and getting lost in himself, his friend Andrés fights to make his friend overcome his pain. Faithfully depicting the process of mourning, it takes on the psychological part of grieving as we become in touch with our inner selves who have been damaged, sometimes ignoring it by creating an illusion and thus postponing the grieving until a breaking point. Counting with an amazing photography work, a palette of colors with special meaning and a very well done script, Espejismo is a movie like no other in the Costa Rican cinematic spectrum.

South American entry in the art film stakes.

[Mozjoukine · 14 December 2018]

The mix of pretension and gloom recognisable from the films of Maya Deren, early Ingmar Bergman or MEMENTO without suggesting any more substance than they had.

Disturbed artist Vladich is confronted by his childhood self, friend Luis Andrés Solano Rodriguez' appealing girl friend Liz Rojas Rodríguez, a mall carousel and a bath tub which ends up on the beach with the rotted fish where his parents drowned before they were interned at the white tiled cemetery.

Deliberately confusing and never suggesting an effective author's vision, this one is mainly interesting as one of the few films from Costa Rica that have had sub-titled screening.