Mar Diestro-Dópido

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There cannot be a perfect top ten in the same way there’s no perfect film, nor perfect viewer. It is neither that these films in particular have withstood the passing of time better than others, but rather that time disappears when I lose myself in them.

So, I fade into the cinematic nightmare of Mulholland Dr., head spinning, as it obliquely echoes the elusive twofold lust which drives That Obscure Object of Desire, and in doing so, I succumb to the surreal essence of the creative process (and to Mastroianni’s beguiling eyes) that pervades Fellini’s 8½. Whisked away into delirium in The Shining, I’m systemically corrupted like The Man Who Fell to Earth, then rebel against the suffocating boxed-up solitude and repression of the titular Jeanne Dielman, until I fatally surrender to the maddening abuse in Repulsion, only to be born anew in The Flower of My Secret.

As in Some Like It Hot, it is the wondrous possibility of transformation – of self, of the canon, of the medium itself – what makes me fall in love with cinema (and these ten films) again, and again and again, enraptured by the vampiric search for an unattainable pure frame, just like the one that fuels the addiction of the filmmaker protagonist in Arrebato.

After all, when all it’s been said and voted, and in Billy Wilder’s iconic words, nobody’s perfect. Neither is my top ten. But what a trip.