Window Boy Would Also Like to Have a Submarine

Window Boy Would Also Like to Have a Submarine, written and directed by Alex Piperno, is a surreal, supernatural story about a cruise ship, a hut in a forest, and an apartment in Montevideo.

A man who works (or rather, struggles to) on a cruise ship finds a hidden door in the ship’s hull that inexplicably leads to a woman’s apartment. Neither the man or the woman seem overly concerned by this, instead accepting it without much inquisition, like you might in a dream or while decoding a surrealist painting. Piperno has said that this was inspired by the three-hour ferry journey from his native Uruguay to Buenos Aires where he studied cinema. The boat journey was the vehicle for new and unexpected possibilities, as well as the partition between one life and another.

Meanwhile, another storyline follows a group of villagers in the Philippines who are perplexed by the discovery of a lonely hut in the middle of the jungle. The arrival of the hut frightens some and fascinates others. 

The themes are loud, but the film itself is eerily quiet. The actors playing the crew-hand and the woman scarcely speak to one another, and though the villagers are much more communicative, the sound of the jungle is far noisier.

Window Boy Would Also Like to Have a Submarine is visually stunning, but it’s hard to tell whether it’s dreamlike or simply sending you to sleep. For example, the obfuscation of a shot of a whale breaching by showing it reflected in the window of the ship is very impressive – but seeing the whale would be much more entertaining than thinking about the placement of the camera.

Like a ferry, Window Boy Would Also Like to Have a Submarine cruises slowly and quietly through darkness. It’s an aesthetic pleasure, and a thought-provoker, but ultimately it fails to thrill.

Miranda Slade

Window Boy Would Also Like to Have a Submarine does not have a UK release date yet.

Read more reviews from our Berlin Film Festival 2020 coverage here.

For further information about the event visit the Berlin Film Festival website here.