‘5 More Minutes’ San Sebastian Review: Javier Ruiz Caldera Sends Berto Romero And Belén Cuesta Into A Repetitive Five-Minute Time Loop

A strong conceptual idea with a comic peak that arrives far too early: five minutes in, an unsettling device sets off a run of funny situations in short order, only to leave the film with little else to do for the rest of its running time. Javier Ruiz Caldera’s black comedy starts from a premise with obvious points in common with Groundhog Day, though with a few specific differences that open up different possibilities for this kind of story. At heart, though, it still works like one of those loop tales that only break when something crucial happens between the characters. And here, its two leads, who have seen plenty of movies and know how these mechanics work, are well aware of it. Which, in turn, makes that dramatic breakthrough harder to achieve.

We’re looking at a couple in crisis who have rented a house far from everything to get some peace and patch things up. Berto Romero, the well-known Spanish comedian and co-writer of the film, and Belén Cuesta travel to one of those houses with a pool, set in a vast, idyllic landscape with no cell signal and no wifi. They’re following their therapist’s advice, though it’s clear, as they get lost on the road, that they still have a long way to go before they start getting along. There they’re met by a real estate agent (Javier Cámara), who rents them the place and shows them how beautiful and calm it all is.

Beyond a few earlier tensions, what breaks the logic of the story happens five minutes after they arrive, when the three are magically transported back to the start of their stay. It takes them a while to understand what’s going on, but they have entered a literal five-minute loop that keeps returning them to the same starting point. The main difference from concepts like Groundhog Day, and not a minor one, is twofold: first, the same thing happens to everyone, not just one person; second, the consequences of events carry over from one loop to the next. Put another way: if you get hurt or die, you’ll be injured (or dead) when the next loop begins. And so on…

And that device, well, it brings out the worst in each of them, pushing the three protagonists, through a series of botched situations, into a spiral of violence that becomes the only way, in a sense, to change what’s happening between them, and between them and some neighbors, and so on. It’s not worth giving away more than that, since there are several surprises on this front and most of them come early. But the truth is that once you connect with the device and start to grasp what it can bring, the film begins to spin in its own loop, too.

That’s because, unlike the best films built on this kind of concept, 5 More Minutes has characters drawn in very broad strokes, a very conventional conflict, and little room to go anywhere from there. That house, those characters and those few minutes end up becoming a kind of prison, for the characters and for the audience alike, who will start out laughing at some of the chaotic situations the protagonists get themselves into, only to grow worn out by all the shouting and forced tension. And neither the script nor the cleverness of the director of Spanish Movie manages to escape the challenge of getting out of its own trap.

Perhaps the problem with 5 Minutos Más has less to do with the film itself than with the place it occupies as one of the Spanish films in the festival’s official competition. Its pleasures are modest and might be enjoyed a little more on a streaming afternoon or, perhaps, at a late-night screening at a genre-focused festival. Its charm stops there, and it’s hard to ask for much more. What it offers is an ingenious device, a few good jokes, some high-impact moments and very little else.