A power game between an architect and the woman who insists on telling him her story captivates in Kike Maíllo’s English-language debut
“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” That’s the Saint-Exupéry zinger with which star architect Jeremiasz (Cold War’s Tomasz Kot) closes a
Paris lecture, after describing his conversion to designing buildings with a social purpose. But the unsound psychological foundations, and the cost, of perfectionism are the theme of this well-written, devious Euro-thriller.
Grabbing a taxi to catch a flight back to Poland, Jeremiasz lets improbably named twentysomething Texel Textor (Athena Strates) hop along for the ride. She’s so intent on chatting that she leaves her luggage on the street, and both of them end up missing their flights. Jeremiasz settles in for a two-hour wait in the Charles de Gaulle airport extension that, in this reality, he designed, but inevitably bumps into Texel again. He tries to give her the cold shoulder, but, after she makes an alarming admission and insists she tells him her story, he consents to being her captive audience.