Critics reviews

Films being shot in a single take is a popular gimmick in arthouse circles (we've had two in the past year, Victoria from Germany and Fish & Cat from Iran) – but the absence of cuts, as if keeping things natural, is meaningful here, making the point that technology can't quite substitute for real human contact. Even if you don't speak Greek or Spanish, the camera in 10,000 KM speaks for itself.

The final shot plays over "Veinte Anos," a beautiful song about the pain two lovers experience after one falls out of love with the other. With its poignant delicacy and respect for both parties' feelings, the ballad is a fitting end to a tenderly insightful modern romance.

Having decided on a promising concept, Marques-Marcet treats it with the same clumsiness already apparent in the first scene, neither exploiting the realist potential it contains, nor properly utilizing it for narrative means. The episodes that make up 10.000 Km are at once too everyday and not everyday enough, lacking both the sort of carefully drip-fed details needed to sustain interest or produce tension as well as the sort of pleasingly naturalistic feel that might carry them despite this.

A young couple is at the centre of Carlos Marqués-Marcet's superb debut10,000 km, which opens with a beautifully intimate and understated 20-minute fixed take in which they try for a baby.

The immensity of the physical distance stretched out between them is thrown in sharp relief not only by the confines of computer screens, but by Marqués-Marcet's smart choice to virtually never leave Alex and Sergi's respective flats once she travels to Los Angeles. Through clever close ups, edits and manipulations of the frame, Marqués-Marcet blurs the edges between Skype calls, google map tours and home movies.