A gentle breeze, the sound of the sea, swaying palm trees, warm sand between your toes… Who doesn’t dream of escaping everyday life and immersing themselves in paradise, even if only for one week a week? years? Arrive, get out, leave all the stress behind – that is the minimum expectation for a wonderful holiday away from home.
“Your paradise within reach!” The tour operator “Everfield” also advertises in the nasty satire “Time Share”. Sebastián Hofmann shows in a bizarre way how the paradise dream can burst. With ‘Time Share’ (‘Tiempo compartido’), the Mexican director manages to create a super-aesthetic, sometimes grotesque reckoning with the holiday industry.
The Netflix production premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, where it also won the Jury Award for Best Screenplay. Already A few months later the Netflix release followed, where you can still stream the film exclusively.
When shared suffering becomes double suffering
This is what “Time Share” is about: Pedro (Luis Gerardo Méndez) and his wife Eva (Cassandra Ciangherotti) can hardly believe their luck: they have managed to get a dream villa in a holiday resort for a top price. But the joy doesn’t last long: the hotel has overbooked her room. And so they have no choice but to share their home with Abel (Andrés Almeida) and his family of four. While Eva soon gets along with the family too well for Pedro’s liking, he can’t shake the feeling that something is terribly wrong in paradise…
Where the heights are exceedingly high, the fall is exceedingly deep, that is the nature of things. Logically, a holiday can be used very well to deconstruct it, or better said: to make the main characters fall on their faces. Is it any wonder that film history is full of film trips gone wrong, including: B. “See Bruges… and die?” or movie hits like “The Hangover” and of course “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”.
“Time Share” is special because it is more than just a boring comedy. Although it starts off quite humorously – the moment when Abel’s family including the bellhop shows up at the door is downright bizarre, as do the subsequent scenes in which Pedro tries to talk to the receptionist or the administration – the film develops into a genre conglomeration that is above all a stylistic delight.
The friendly facade is crumbling in the basement
Horror-like sounds and subversive camera movements always suggest and culminate in a sense of the uncanny and conspiratorial. in beautifully lit pink-blue-black and neon-lit images. These are suddenly interrupted by the overly bright and crowded hustle and bustle of the hotel grounds.
The web of plots is difficult to penetrate: the farce that organizer ‘Everfield’ carries out with his bookers runs deep. A subplot develops around hotel employees Gloria (Monserrat Marañon) and Andres (Miguel Rodarte), which gives the story a second level. As they greet and care for guests poolside and in the lobby with Oscar-worthy representations, the facade of the evil game is crumbling in the company’s basement.
‘Time Share’ manages to expose the true ambiguity of the industry without ever becoming completely concrete. What remains at the end is a small question mark – and flamingos.