What would you put up with for the perfect flat? Bernabé Rico's Spanish comedy-drama One Careful Owner hands Sara a bright, roomy apartment at a bargain, then attaches a single condition that turns the deal into a waiting game with a stranger's life.
What is One Careful Owner about?
Sara has been hunting for a home she can actually afford, and suddenly one lands in her lap: spacious, flooded with light, and priced far below anything else she has seen. The catch is written into the contract. The flat still belongs to Lola, its elderly owner, and Sara cannot move in until Lola is gone. What begins as a cold financial arrangement between two women who have no reason to like each other slowly turns into something else. Sara keeps visiting, and Lola, who has spent decades in those rooms, proves far more stubborn and alive than the paperwork assumed. The film mines the awkwardness of a relationship in which one person is, on paper, waiting for the other to leave, and finds in it both comedy and an unexpectedly tender portrait of two generations forced to share a doorstep.
About the cast
Juana Acosta and Kiti Mánver carry the film as the two women bound together by the apartment, with Carlos Areces, José Sacristán, Eduardo Rejón, Rosario Lara and Rafael Tubio around them. Much of the film rests on the interplay between its two leads, whose scenes together shift from frosty negotiation to genuine warmth.
Context & significance
Released in 2020 and running a tidy 94 minutes, One Careful Owner is a Spanish production that sits comfortably between drama and comedy. Its premise draws on a real feature of the Spanish property market, where buyers can purchase a home while the current occupant retains the right to live in it for life, an arrangement that makes for a naturally uncomfortable and naturally funny setup. Bernabé Rico uses that situation to talk about housing pressure on younger adults, loneliness in old age, and the odd intimacies that form when money and mortality are on the table at the same time.
Watching One Careful Owner on Ktime
One Careful Owner is available on K-Time with a Persian dub, so Farsi-speaking viewers can follow the story without subtitles. This page can be read freely; to watch the film you need to log in with a K-Time account. The service is designed in Farsi from the ground up for the Persian-speaking diaspora, and the original Spanish audio is also offered.