Timecrimes (2007)
"Los cronocrímenes" (original title)

A man accidentally gets into a time machine and travels back in time nearly an hour. Finding himself will be the first of a series of disasters of unforeseeable consequences.

Director:

Nacho Vigalondo

Writer:

Nacho Vigalondo

Stars:

Karra Elejalde, Candela Fernández, Bárbara Goenaga

8 wins & 6 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview:
Karra Elejalde	...	Héctor
Candela Fernández	...	Clara
Bárbara Goenaga	...	La Chica en el Bosque
Nacho Vigalondo	...	El Joven
Juan Inciarte	...	Héctor Ocasional (as Ion Inciarte)

Storyline

Hector is an ordinary man who's moving to a new house with his wife. One evening, while he's looking through his binoculars, he sees a naked girl in the woods. He decides to go there just to find that same girl laying on a rock. Suddenly, a man with a pink bandage covering his face, stabs Hector in his arm with scissors...

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Plot Keywords:

scissors | woods | binoculars | time machine | flashback | 

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Genres:

Sci-Fi | Thriller

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for nudity and language

Details

Country:

Spain

Language:

Spanish

Release Date:

27 June 2008 (Spain)

Also Known As:

Timecrimes

Filming Locations:

Spain

Box Office

Budget:

$2,600,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend:

$4,351 (USA) (12 December 2008)

Gross:

$38,108 (USA) (23 January 2009)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Karbo Vantas Entertainment, Fine Productions, Zip Films

Technical Specs

Runtime:

92 min 66 min (alternate DVD)

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The shirt that the girl in the forest (Bárbara Goenaga) is wearing depicts Schrödinger's cat.

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Quotes

Héctor: [first lines - everything has fallen out of the back of his car] Clara! Clara! Clara! Didn't you hear me calling you?
Clara: You called me?
Héctor: Yeah. You didn't hear me?
Clara: No.
Héctor: This was the one you wanted, right?
Clara: Yeah. And the fertilizer?
Héctor: Up there.
Clara: Put it there.
Héctor: You'll assembled it here?
Clara: Sure.
[...]

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Connections

Remade as Timecrimes

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Soundtracks

"Picture This"
Composed by Jimmy Destri, Deborah Harry and Chris Stein
Performed by Blondie

User Reviews

Thrilling and Thoughtul

"Time is a storm in which we are all lost." William Carlos Williams

"Time flies around here," says Hector's (Karra Elejalde) girl friend before time gets warped maliciously when he goes back in a time machine for about an hour. The ironic statement could as well apply to this intelligent sci fi, Time Crimes, that actually tries to show what confusion will reign if we ever do time travel.

While this Spanish thriller is reminiscent of Memento's playing with time and memory and various other time travel fictions, it lacks psycho-philosophical depth (notwithstanding the Hitchcock relevance of the hero using binoculars to see a fetching lass). Even more, character exploration is secondary to the puzzle of time traveling. The film, concerned with the tricky interplay of cause and effect in the travel, could have given more to the ethical-humanistic implications of voyeurism and bending nature to our will.

Its atmosphere is creepy enough, a black and white effect from muted color, a semi-real world where appearance and reality collide, not unlike this time-bound life itself without the machine. Its heroine, a beautiful nude played by Barbara Goenaga, suggests those Freudian chambers of our hearts where desire and violence seem only a door opening or time change away.

In an age of "system restore," where we can set our computers back in time, altering the continuum to expunge viruses and such makes the premise of Timecrimes seem almost possible. The ramifications from our computer restore are usually saving time and money; from a time machine may come a chance to upset the balance of nature, to throw ourselves into a primitive state of lawlessness. At least that's how writer director Nacho Vigalondo sees it, and his film theorizes.

Nice to have a thoughtful movie these days.