Friday One Sheet: CREATURA

The 'polaroid' style one-sheet is a particular favourite of mine. As you can see below for Elena Martín's Cannes fêted Creatura, it allows room for pull quotes at the top, a well-kerned title below the image, and an ample credit block that reads more like graphics and less like text. The tiny funding logos below that act in the same fashion.

The image itself is from the point of view below the waterline. It offers the vague idea of a (ahem) creature looking up at the curious, innocent, adolescents. It is the distortion, playing with focal planes, that makes this one-sheet distinctive. It reminds me of Sarah Adina Smith's debut The Midnight Swim. Where that film dealt with sisterhood and grief and letting go, Martín is more concerned with the exterior reactions to budding female sexuality. As our own Dustin Chang concluded in his review, "Creatura delves into a difficult subject to many men: female sexual desire and its brutal suppression early on."

One last note: designer Octavio Terol, perhaps, could not resist sneaking in some festival laurels into the tiny amount of negative space in the corner. This is my only gripe here, in an otherwise compelling piece of key art.