(2008; Los Cronocrimenes, Spanish) Strewing articles out the back of his vehicle as he pulls up to his not-yet-finished new house in the countryside, Hector (Karra Elejalde, though his name isn't divulged until much later) calls to his cute wife Clara (Candela Fernandez) for help. My initial impression was that this intriguing film, written and directed by Nacho Vigalondo, who also has the role of the unnamed technician, would be a comedy.

Following a fitful night, on Saturday morning, September 16, 2006, he answers the phone when it rings, but no one answers; using caller-id, he tries to return the call, only to hear a strange automated message. Sitting in a lounge chair in the backyard, viewing the surroundings through a pair of binoculars, he sees through the bushes a young woman removing her shirt, exposing her breasts. When his wife leaves for an errand in the car, he goes to investigate on the other side of his property's fence.

At first bumbling and tripping into the brush, he comes upon the woman lying unconscious, completely naked. The comedy turns creepy when he spots a man with a pink bandage swathed around his head; suddenly he's stabbed in the right arm with a pair of scissors. Running from the scene, he jumps a fence, breaks a window when no one responds to his calls to let him inside, and enters a laboratory facility with music playing.

After finding a first-aid kit and bandaging his wound, he enters through a door marked with yellow nuclear-energy symbols and picks up a walkie-talkie. Speaking with someone on the other end, who says he's monitoring the site with security cameras, Hector's told, "Get out of there!" as the pink mummy with scissors is on the way.

Racing up a lighted path to where the technician urges him to flee, Hector's met outside a silo structure by the technician, who assures him: "We're safe here." But no, the ragheaded man with the scissors looks in through the window of the silo. Quick, hurry! Hector's instructed to get inside a tank with white liquid, where the technician says the intruder wouldn't look to find them; but as the lid closes, the technician doesn't join him as promised.

Released from the pod, spewing liquid from his mouth, Hector sees the young technician, who says: "We've seen each other before, right?" From here I was reminded of both Ground Hog Day and Memento in this adventure's enthralling recursivity. "You went back in time," says the technician, for a little while, maybe an hour - the first mammal to do so.

Looking over at his house through his binoculars, he sees what appears to be himself coming outside with Clara just as he had done earlier. Explaining what's happening as being somewhat like watching his reflection in a mirror, the technician says that all Hector has to do is wait for things to return to normal. However, while the technician goes into another room, Hector tries to contact his wife on the phone, instead hearing his own voice on the other end of the line; he hangs up without saying anything. Next the phone rings and responds with a recorded message, but Hector can hear his voice and Clara's from the house having the same conversation as earlier in the morning.

Concerned that Hector may have disrupted the past - somewhat relieved by hearing Hector say that all of this has already occurred just as previously, the technician says, "Then everything still fits, right?" - the younger man (admitting he's only on the site by accident for the weekend) cautions Hector that upsetting past events will end his life as he knows it.

Apparently ignoring the warning or perhaps wanting to make certain everything happens as earlier, Hector gets into a white car, driving out of the facility. As he passes the young woman on her bicycle, he's struck from behind by a red van, sending Hector inside the car hurtling down a decline, crashing into a tree. Having gashed his forehead, he removes the bandage, soaked from the white liquid and discolored with his diluted blood from the earlier wound, wrapping it about his head.

The woman (Barbara Goenaga) comes to see if he's injured; but as she's about to call for an ambulance, he stops her, takes a pair of scissors from her, and requests her assistance: "It's not easy to explain." First asked as a favor, then ordered by threat with the scissors, she accedes to pulling off her shirt; but when he tells her to strip off the rest of her clothing (promising not to harm her if she follows his instructions), she kicks him and runs off.

Chasing after her, they tumble down a declivity where she's knocked senseless. He carries her back to where he'd first seen her lying naked, removing the rest of her clothes to appear just as she looked earlier in the morning for his reflection to view. When Hector 2 arrives, Hector 1 attacks with the scissors. He then hears the girl scream and goes to her, but she's gone.

Looking for the naked young woman, he returns to his own house where his wife's table is thrown at him, knocking him down stairs. Bruised and battered, he gets back up, climbs onto the roof where he reaches for a woman's foot, pulls at it, and watches in horror as Clara falls to her death.

Using the walkie-talkie, he contacts the technician back at the facility before getting into his own car, driving back and crashing through the gates. Looking like the pink mummy who earlier chased him, he waits for Hector 2 to get inside the tank with the white liquid. The machine doesn't solve problems, the technician tells Hector, it creates them. The man who emerges from the tank, however, isn't Hector 2, he's Hector 3.

At the film's conclusion, a few questions lingered in my mind: When time re-zippers itself, resolving all the Hectors back into one individual, will Hector find a corpse on his property, a wound in his arm, a cut on his forehead? Might all of what he's experienced have been nothing more than a nightmare, causing him a restless night of interrupted sleep?

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Copyright © 2008 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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