Review by Groverdox

I don't really know what to make of the short Peruvian flick "Verano", except that I suppose I enjoyed it. Up until the final scene, when the movie finally acknowledges its audience, it doesn't feel like a movie in any traditional sense. The camera is glued to the protagonist, a little boy who is presumably played by the director's son, since they have the same last name. He rides his bike around his flat, gives himself a bath, runs around in his underwear, goes to the beach, watches street performers. Finally, he looks at the camera and says "I'd like to go back in time to when I was born", and then it's over. This last moment comes as a surprise because you've almost forgotten you're watching a movie leading up to it. There's been no art, nothing's been done for your benefit as a viewer to help you understand. We were led to believe the boy was completely alone, but previously we saw him being driven to the beach. Who drove him?

The effect is, I guess, that it puts us in his lonely little world, and reminds us what it was like to be that age in the summer holidays - "Verano" is Spanish for "Summer" - where we had a lot of time to do not much of anything, and people mostly didn't acknowledge us or even notice we were there.