UN POETA — The Man Who Mistook Himself for a Poem
Everything glitters.
Everything drips.
Everything feels freshly scrubbed, even if the driver is a wreck.
Óscar—played with fragile bravado by Ubeimar Ríos— was once a poet.
Or at least he once published two books that smelled faintly of recognition.
Now, in his fifties, tossed back into his mother’s house like a returning tide, he clings to his identity with the desperation of someone holding the only umbrella in a storm that doesn’t care.
His insistence—“Un Poeta!”—echoes like a tragic joke, like something between Fellini’s lost dreamers, Kaurismäki’s lovable wrecks, and Charlie Kaufman’s solipsistic heroes who believe the universe is a theatre built only for their suffering.
Yet this is where the fabulous script and acting perform their miracle: every time Óscar sinks into melodrama, the film flicks him lightly on the forehead with humor.
Every despair is echoed by a ridiculous gesture;
every tragedy by a crooked shirt collar or a poorly chosen metaphor.
It’s as if the camera itself were raising an eyebrow.
The Comedy of a Man Who Forgot to Grow Up
Óscar is introduced as a man permanently misaligned—hair in rebellion, teeth in protest, shirts that look like they escaped from a discount bin during a small riot.
He speaks about poetry the way some speak about religion—eyes lifted toward a divine ceiling fan, voice trembling with the sacred weight of syllables.
The opening scene, where he throws himself onto his mother’s bed and screams that he can’t do anything but write poems, is pure tragicomic opera. A scene that could be played in slow motion, accompanied by Puccini, except that the only audience he has is his exhausted mother—and us, already stifling a laugh.
Simón Mesa Soto, in his second feature, wields tone the way a violinist wields a bow.
The shift from the dramatic to the absurd is so fluid it recalls Buñuel, Roy Andersson, and at times Almodóvar’s early mischievous compassion. Every situation contains a joke trembling beneath its tragedy.
Óscar, pouring alcohol into his thermos before teaching, becomes a walking metaphor: a man trying to disinfect the day with a personal antiseptic.
His monologues to students—half-philosophy, half-nonsense—are both hilarious and heartbreaking. We laugh, but with the uncomfortable awareness that we could one day become him.
The Spark Named Yurlady
Then comes Yurlady—fifteen, talented, luminous.
A poet disguised as a teenager.
A spark in Óscar’s stale universe.
Her presence feels like a third act plot twist in a Truffaut film, a gust of life in a room with too few windows.
Óscar, suddenly awakened, shines again—freshly rinsed, like that car leaving the water tunnel, headlights gleaming with the illusion that everything is possible.
He sees a mission. A destiny.
To make Yurlady a great poet.
To resurrect himself through her talent.
But like a character in a Coen brothers comedy, Óscar’s noble intentions topple into chaos.
He missteps.
He misunderstands.
He pushes where he should listen.
The situation unravels in scenes of delightful absurdity, as though fate were choreographed by a mischievous editor with a fondness for jump cuts.
His literary peers reject him.
He begs a bookseller to resurrect his forgotten volumes.
He rages against the world as if it were a poorly written stanza.
A Poem of Class, Ego, and Fragile Dreams
And then the film expands.
It becomes a fresco.
Yurlady’s overcrowded apartment, vibrating with life, becomes a parallel universe. A place where poetry is not a career crisis but a luxury nobody asked for. Here, the film grows sharper, more socially resonant, without losing its absurd elegance.
The script navigates these contradictions with a tightrope walker’s grace.
We understand Óscar’s every wrong turn.
We foresee every disaster.
We watch him march straight into them anyway—
a Don Quixote without a horse,
tilting at windmills made of paper and half-remembered verses.
Conclusion: A Film About the Ridiculous Beauty of Wanting
A film that laughs at its own sadness.
A poem disguised as a comedy disguised as a tragedy.
A chronicle of a man freshly washed by the world, shining for a second, and muddy again before the credits roll.
It is funny, it is tender, it is cruel, it is fabulously acted and sharply written—
and like every great film about broken dreamers,
it leaves you wondering whether a poet is someone who writes verses,
or someone who simply refuses to stop dreaming,
even when reality is already closing the water tunnel behind him.
By Giulia Dobre
Nov 17th 2025
Paris
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