A surprisingly sprightly low-budget Basque romantic comedy, Bypass looks like a TV sitcom and occasionally feels like a TV sitcom, but co-directors Patxo Tellería and Aitor Mazo surely know how to plot a caper feature. Tellería and Mazo (a playwright and TV star who also stars in Bypass) pretty much plot themselves onto a precipice, yet somehow manage to pull it all off.
Man-about-Barcelona Xabi (Gorka Otxoa) used to room in Bilbao with his university best friends Maria (Sara Cózar), Jone and Ugalde. Currently dating Nerea (Bárbara Goenaga), who could be the woman to finally tame this bachelor boy, Xabi receives a long-awaited phone call from Bilbao to inform him that the terminally-ill Maria is about to die from her congenital heart condition. Aghast to discover that Maria has always been in love with him, Xabi decides to tell her that the feeling is mutual in order to sweeten her ‘last hours’ on earth. But, fortified by his love, Maria makes a dramatic recovery. Before he knows it, Xabi has talked himself into moving in with her in Bilbao even as his Barcelona girlfriend announces she is pregnant…
Fionnuala Halligan, Screen International
