Stockholm won this year’s Transilvania Film Festival Competition so I saw it in the cinema a couple of months ago. Rodrigo Sorogoyen seems to have mainly directed TV Series so far and one movie in 2008 (8 Dates), but which seems to have remained known only in Spain (winning some national prizes there).

Stockholm on the other hand, won quite a lot of prizes since it was launched and participated in some of the important film festivals around the globe this year, but it seems that only the jury in Romania discovered the ‘something special’ in it and gave it the competition grand prize.

I have to admit that for about 75 minutes of the movie, the story didn’t send me any message that could make me even consider this as a good movie. Or as my type of movie. It was just a regular story…the beginning of a love story. Him and her meet at a party, he tries to get her to his place and in his bed. She resists, he insists and in the end, in the morning, after doing all sorts of mating games, it happens.

As the story evolves, you can see that him and her as well, show their true nature, with psychical issues, with deviant behavior, with obsessions. But still, the ending is sublime. The ending is what gives this movie the sparkle. Simple, but still shocking. With no words, just action, it’s what saves this movie from being considered a cheesy love story.

It still cannot be described as a very strong movie, at least not in my opinion, but Rodrigo Sorogoyen manages to build this movie in a way that he takes it out of the ‘average box’ and moves it to the next level. He is a young director at the beginning of this, but it looks promising so far.