Sueñan los androides

The title may allude to Philip K Dick but "Blade Runner" this ain't. Once again we are in a future that looks like the present or even the recent past, a future where life is seemingly meaningless and where people are gunned down willy-nilly as they go about their everyday business - or are they even 'people'.

There's no real narrative. Ion De Sosa's short feature, (it only lasts an hour), isn't so much disquieting as baffling, (it helps to know the source if only to put some flesh on the bare bones), and yet, without doing anything out of the ordinary, this is sufficiently radical to be of more than passing interest and it signals a future of sorts for its director. Of course, one things for sure and that is you won't see it anytime soon down at your local.

If you take out the unnecessary grainy shot after grainy shot of empty buildings where nothing is happening and all the "documentary" shots of the film makers friends doing things of little interest, you would be left with a five minute short film that takes the most boring aspects of Philip K Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep novel and struggles to form any kind of plot from it. Hiding behind the "experimental" film tag (possibly from receiving 20000 euros funding from the experimental film board) only serves to pad out 90% of what should have been on the cutting room floor. Its hard to work out where all the money went as the team apparently also worked for free. How much does it cost to hire a plastic sheep? A nativity scene somewhere in Benidorm has a character missing!

They would have been better making a film around the gay dancer (Android 3) -the only real talent in this film. A couple of the scenes were quite good but were too far apart. If you like Lars Von Trier films you might like it. I went to a packed "international premiere" at the Berlinale to see this and was happy when it ended. But like LVT films, even though I find them at times tedious, some of the shots at least linger in your head for a day or two after and upon a rose tinted reflection it feels that at least you had some kind of experience watching it: that its own vibe. That is an aspect that also holds true for this film. Unfortunately its not as good as the cover.

Unlike one of the other reviewers here, i dont think they need to get a better camera, I loved the look of this film. The endless shots of architecture are beautiful and they have a haunting quality to them. The film is a bit too minimalistic in terms of both plot and themes, even for an experimental film, and it does get a bit boring at times. It could have been cut down to 40 minutes, but say what you want about it, it was an unusual film and watching it was an experience and for this kind of film that is enough. I felt like this watch made my life richer in a way that many commercial hits do not. Yes this was more boring, but despite its minimalism it was less empty than a lot of big productions.