AllMovie

In Mexican filmmaker Jesus-Maria Lozano's debut feature, Just Like That, Roberto García Suárez plays Ivan, a college dropout who works in a bookstore and spends the preponderance of his off time ineffectually, in his tiny apartment, with his pet turtles. Willfully estranged from his family, he is visited only by a blind friend, the student Roel (Oliver Cantú), who gives him a video camera to record the mundane events of his life. Ivan then encounters two thespians, Santiago (David González Zorrilla) and Mariana (Berenice Almaguer), and develops an enduring infatuation with one -- which prompts him to make the brave and difficult journey into the outside world. Writer/director Lozano shoots the picture in sequences of exactly 32 seconds each (thus editing it rhythmically), and contrasts this with the cinéma vérité, video diary-style camerawork of the material.