Small Studio Saturday: Timecrimes Fits a Whole Time Loop Into One Afternoon
Timecrimes (Los cronocrímenes, 2007) is the first feature of Spanish writer-director Nacho Vigalondo, who also appears in it as the scientist. It follows Héctor, a middle-aged man renovating a house in the Spanish countryside with his wife Clara, who spots a young woman in the forest through his binoculars and goes out to investigate. It’s science fiction that runs on a couple of locations, five credited actors, and no visual effects – the kind of film Small Studio Saturday exists for, where the idea is the budget.
The Twist
Héctor is attacked by a man with a bandaged face, flees into a nearby building, and is talked into hiding inside a machine by a scientist on a walkie-talkie. He comes out about an hour in the past. What follows is a closed loop: the Héctor from an hour later (“Héctor 2”) crosses paths with the man he was, and every step he takes to protect himself ends up causing the things that happened to him – including turning him into the bandaged man who attacked him, after a crash cuts his head. When he sees the woman fall to her death from the roof of his own house, he believes he has killed Clara, and decides to go back one more time, becoming “Héctor 3.”
The final turn is that the third Héctor doesn’t undo the loop – he finishes it. Realizing what has to happen, he hides the real Clara, then finds the young woman, cuts off her ponytail, gives her Clara’s coat, and sends her upstairs, so that Héctor 2 will chase her onto the roof and mistake her for his wife. The death that sends Héctor 2 back in time is the one Héctor 3 stages to keep it going, and the film ends with him sitting with Clara on the lawn while Héctor 2 drives off to the lab to become him.
It’s a time-loop story that follows the loop’s logic with unusual discipline: each Héctor knows only what he has lived so far, and every action that looks like a mistake turns out to have been required. A remake was announced but never made, which leaves the original as the one to see.