No matter how brightly an emotion shines or speaks of eternity in glances that promise utopias in achievable colors, in the end, everything is varnish, and all varnish will be stripped away by time. The promise was not diluted by malice or whim. The smile did not become dull through your fault or mine. Your voice once moved me, but now it no longer carries a future I wish to be part of. It wasn’t your fault or mine. It’s simply the wind that sets the clock in motion. The weight of each grain in the hourglass, distorting sentences along twisted paths coated in lime. It’s the ash that was once excitement. It’s boredom generating unnecessary friction, slowing the mechanism to a halt in the complete stillness of the absolute present. The now, incapable of bearing fruit.

ENNUI, by filmmaker Alberto Martín-Aragón, groans, screams, and gags itself in every second of its runtime, exposing cracks in a disenchanted possibility, chewed to exhaustion. It’s the dream suffocated by the everyday, trapped in a reality devoid of romanticism and paralyzed by the fear of those who no longer see roads ahead, inside a large, old car without fuel. ENNUI is despair made visual, audio, and nonconformity. Each frame translates a secret left unspoken because it has rotted.

The performances, by Aragón himself and actress Julia Doménech, anchor this world in erosion. A couple locked in a constant gaze into the mirror of disillusionment, a marriage so terrified of acknowledging its end that it seals itself in absolute void. Of everything. Aragón is a fearless filmmaker who surrenders completely. His passion seems to refine his works more and more, leading them to a state between nihilism and tragic love, laden with brutally wild truths. Aragón is an increasingly rare breed.