No cert, 110 mins
The Hours of the Day, critically acclaimed at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, is an unsettling drama about Abel, a young Spanish man who lives a life of crushing mundanity. Long, wide shots capture Abel taking breakfast with his mother, discussing property prices over coffee. The camera is equally still and patient when Abel pores over ledger sheets in the family business, a clothing shop that he would prefer to offload. It’s almost as if we are waiting for something — anything — to happen to this perpetually frustrated man.
Then Abel kills someone. She’s a random victim, she does nothing whatsoever to provoke him. The attack is filmed with the same distance that Abel shows to his crime: this is a determinedly unemotional approach to the serial-killer movie, and it’s all the more chilling for that.