The great merit of Vacuity is to do so much with so little. And by little I mean economic resources, because when it comes to ideas, Vacuity is not short of them. In other words, Vacuity confirms an important fact which is that in cinema and, by extension in art, projects end up working if there is talent regardless of whether there is money involved. .
Like a full film debut, director, producer, screenwriter and editor (hence nothing!) Toni Morejón shows that he has talent to spare and that far from wasting it, he takes advantage of nearly each and every one of the thirty minutes Vacuity lasts so leaving it's personal stamp frame by frame.
There are obvious influences from Nolan and Aronofsky although the play seeps David Lynch through all its seams, accomplishing something so difficult to portray on the big screen as is a suggestion, leaving the viewer to walk through the dark corners of a surreal dyed journey of open interpretations and conclusions.
The fact is that Vacuity gains greatly in the claustrophobic sequences, those in which the director directs the camera dead-on the overpowering protagonist (generating images of great beauty, such as inside a car that gives way to a landing plane, subject to diverse interpretations) or in the nighttime images of a shadowy Barcelona. Such dark contrasts in an intriguing game of mirrors with the clarity of the sweetest memories (created in a room, film set with an extensive and generous space).
The first couple of minutes are also a revisit sui generis to the opening scene of "Outlaws" by Robert Siodmak with an immediate effect: it glues you to your seat and you applaud the "keep the change" with the burning desire to know how the story goes.
Those details (I put myself now in a situation of an eye that is emerging as a metaphor of sleep or waking nightmare of a life that is sensed as unreal, or of the opening scene in the sea shore of a clear "malickniana" inspiration) are unmistakable signs of good Toni Morejon behind the camera showing undeniable skills ranging from the control of the story to the perception of the perfect sequence.
I will not deny that, as with Nolan and his devious stories, there are occasional rhetoric dialogues that elude me and some characters deserved more prominence, but I am aware of the limitation imposed by a medium- length, so that the condensation task is again worthy to be applauded.
We should finally emphasis the excellent soundtrack, tinged with character that so well defines the film and its atmospheric photography work. No exaggeration to say that Vacuity, with all the lack of means, is infinitely superior to any recent Spanish premiere, where the absence of ideas shines and lack of authorial stamp of its directors. Vacuity is, in short, a demonstration of the conjunction of cinephilia and talent (especially talent) which always bears its fruit. And these are very encouraging.
