Lesson One in low-budget Spanish thriller Timecrimes (Los
cronocrímenes): “Don’t be a creep.” It’s creepiness that
leads married Héctor (Karra Elejalde) to peer around his
neighbourhood with binoculars, thereby spotting a pair of bare breasts
in a nearby thicket—and to go snooping through the woods in search of
the boobs and their owner. Héctor finds the object of his
affection naked and unconscious; a dude with a macabre pink-bandaged
face stabs Héctor in the arm with scissors, and various
shenanigans lead him to seek refuge in a vat in a nearby laboratory.
(Spoiler: bandage guy turns out to be future-Héctor). Actually,
the full version of the aforementioned lesson is: “Don’t be a creep, in
case your neighbour is conducting secret time-machine experiments.”
Writer/director Nacho Vigalondo (playing the bearded guy) has made
his time-puzzle reasonably engaging and suspenseful; it’s fun to watch
Héctor turn into a guy in a pink bandage willing to brutally
attack…himself. Once various alternate versions of Héctor
finish their journeys, viewers are left with the paradoxes and nagging
questions inherent to the time-travel genre—and perhaps a desire to
watch 2004’s Primer, a low-budget time-travel jaunt with more to
say.
This article appears in Apr 16-22, 2009.