REVIEW Middle-aged Hector (Karra Elejalde) is lounging outside his country home when he spies through binoculars a young woman naked in the woods. Investigating, he’s attacked by a man with a face covered by bloody bandage, and flees to a nearby property where a laboratory worker (Nacho Vigalondo) tells him to hide from his pursuer in a mechanical device. When Hector
reemerges from the as-yet-untested time machine, it’s several hours earlier — and his binoculars now spy himself, or "Hector 2," at home going through the same pre-attack motions. Eliminating the doppelganger and ensuring the rewound hours ahead don’t turn disastrous proves ever more difficult as Spanish writer-director Vigalondo’s ingenious screenplay becomes an endlessly spiraling Escher painting of a narrative. While the final payoff is a little
underwhelming, this very clever thriller proves it’s still possible to do sci-fi that’s brainy, imaginative, and not at all dependent on CGI spectacle.
TIMECRIMES opens Fri/19 in Bay Area theaters.