A Bench In The Park - Film Review

Having split up with his long-term girlfriend, Juan (Alex Brendemühl) is determined to meet a new woman in a special, random way. Ignoring his friends’ matchmaking efforts, he devises an unusual scheme: he will sit on a park bench each day at the same time, before going on to a particular bar. He figures this will up the odds of chance encounters, and he soon encounters both the extrovert Alicia (Victoria Freire) and the bookish Ana (Mónica López). But how will he choose between them?

Musing on the role of chance in matters of the heart, A Bench In The Park makes for an ironically amusing and pleasingly concise debut feature from Catalan director Agustí Vila. Already compared to the loquacious, bittersweet romances of Eric Rohmer, the film restricts itself to a handful of locations, and focuses on how its deliberately ‘ordinary’ protagonist becomes trapped in his own web of deception.