Rendez-vous Review: The Tension of Real Time
- Romey Norton
- 17 hours ago
- 3 min read
By Romey Norton - January 19, 2025
With Rendez-vous, Mexican filmmaker Pablo Olmos Arrayeles delivers a tightly wound thriller that hinges on a deceptively simple formal challenge: the entire film unfolds in a single, uninterrupted take. There are no cuts, no visual escapes, and no temporal ellipses. The result is a film that traps its audience in the same uneasy present as its characters, transforming a seemingly ordinary meeting into a sustained exercise in suspense.
The premise of this Spanish film is immediately relatable and quietly ominous. A couple meets for the first time after connecting online; their encounter is shaped by the familiar mix of anticipation, curiosity, and vulnerability that comes with digital intimacy transitioning into the physical world. What begins as an awkward but plausible rendezvous gradually curdles into something far more unsettling. As conversations deepen and silences stretch, small details begin to feel charged, and the question shifts from who are these people? To what are they capable of?
The single-take approach is not a gimmick here; it is the film’s central nervous system. By refusing the relief of editing, Rendez-vous forces the viewer to experience time as the characters do. There is no cutting away from discomfort, no narrative shorthand to signal when danger arrives. Instead, tension accumulates organically, built from performance, blocking, and the precise choreography of movement within the frame. This might sound intense, especially for a full-length feature film with a runtime of 1 hour 42 minutes, but don’t let that put you off watching. This film is an experience, an interesting way of filmmaking and storytelling.
The camera becomes an invisible third presence, hovering close enough to observe emotional micro-shifts while never intruding overtly. This closeness heightens the sense of vulnerability, particularly as the balance of power between the two characters subtly evolves. What feels like flirtation in one moment can read as control in the next, and the absence of cuts allows these transitions to unfold with unnerving plausibility. Some aspects feel like a fly-on-the-wall type documentary, and you forget you’re watching two actors and not a real couple.
As a fan of films and acting, this style of filming is very exciting and interesting to me, as there’s no room for error, and you have to work with what you get. There’s no stopping, re-setting, re-starting, re-doing your lines if you got them wrong; it’s all honest work and sounds. A lot of praise goes to the actors for this - especially with how they make everything seem to natural. The use of mostly natural sounds is risky, but it pays off. Very little music is used - only when aiding some serious tension.
Rendez-vous is also shot completely in black and white. Here, this technique strikes a great balance between the romantic ‘arty’ old school style cinema and then building a sense of anxiety and discomfort. For me, it works, but I do recognise that this choice also creates a filter between the audience and the subject matter - audiences not comfortable and used to black and white cinema might find this disruptive and disjointing. Because of this choice, sometimes the lighting is either too dark or too bright, but as the film is an Indie, it gets away with it. The struggle is not being able to see the actors' faces completely, and being unable to tell what time of day it is.
The film also taps into contemporary anxieties surrounding connection. Rendez-vous is less interested in condemning digital dating than in exposing the fragile trust it requires. The screen persona versus the real self becomes a silent undercurrent, reminding the viewer how little we truly know about the people we choose to meet, and how quickly intimacy can become a liability. Through this, the story is intriguing, but it loses its way towards the end, feeling rushed and trying too hard to tie up a story that took a dark turn. They bring in a few more characters, police and friends, and it was its strongest when it was just the two leads.
Rendez-vous is lean, focused, and admirably disciplined. By committing fully to its real-time structure, the film transforms an everyday scenario into a nerve-tightening psychological experience. It’s a must-watch for cinephiles who enjoy a film that challenges how stories are shot and told.
'Rendez-Vous' is available now on Prime Video in the US.
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