Extraterrestrial (2011)

Directed by: Nacho Vigalondo

Julio (Julián Villagrán) awakes in the apartment of a woman (Julia, played by Michelle Jenner) he can barely remember from the previous night.  Their awkward, hangover-hazed conversation is soon interrupted by their discovery that the phones and TV are not working, Madrid is deserted and a four-mile diameter spaceship is hovering over the city.

In the hands of Hollywood, this would be (indeed, has been) the starting point for an action movie in which selfless, square-jawed heroes kick some alien butt.  But Vigalondo’s sights are fixed on the earth, not the skies, and Julia and Julio quickly start dealing with more prosaic concerns, like getting rid of the creepy, borderline-stalker neighbour who has remained in the apartment block, or disguising their affair from Julia’s now-returned boyfriend.  Each convenient untruth spawns a litter of consequences that must be trammelled up. Soon, the need to sustain this growing set of fictions becomes the critical activity, relegating any consideration of the (fortunately inert) spaceship to the non-urgent category.

Vigalondo has great fun with the situation and his characters’ foibles, enhanced by a series of running gags which I won’t spoil for you.  But the icing on cake is the sheer credibility of the reactions and deceptions of the tiny cast of characters. This may be the most believable science-fiction movie ever.

The director never shows us the aliens, and there would be no point in doing so.  Nothing emerging from the ship could possibly be stranger than the creatures already on the planet.  Brilliant.