The Light Thief had me wondering how demons take their coffee. I don’t mean this as a comment against the film, in that it was dull or that it lost me. Far from it, the film’s foray into the world of beings that are far more power than us is most interesting when it imagines how supernatural characters interact with our mundane world. The film introduces us to Adham, a beautiful, charming ladies’ man who falls into bed with women and, in doing so, steals some essential element from them. He stores the essence, which is the film shows as a pure, blue light trapped in a bottle, in a hidden room that looks like a shrine, and he has collected dozens of these bottles. When one of his old conquests, Soleen, comes looking for hers, she finds much more than her own in his hidden room.
Although this story has been told before (that the essence, the soul, love itself can be stolen through seduction), there are several aspects of The Light Thief that make it stand out as unique. First, the main characters Adham and Soleen—whose names are darkness and the sun, respectively—are more mythic than human, which underscores the eerie, fantastical nature of the film. They are more than real, and the actors seem to take pleasure in perfecting their allegorical roles. In particular, Ángel de Miguel (Adham) delights in the wonderfully caddish nature of his sticky-fingered antagonist. In seducing his latest prey, Sara, he pretends to be interested in public service, flatters her boyishly, sleeps with her, and leaves her with a slapdash, smirking grin as he walks out the door. Adham is a vessel of selfish glee, even as Soleen is the epitome of emptiness and despair.
In a similar way, the fact that this desperate man and his female light-stealing counterpart are named Adham and Eva (Adam and Eve) cement the characters not as real people but as figures of myth, which make the lavish mise-en-scène delightful and fascinating. Eva, in particular, is pure id; the fact that she keeps her victim’s lights in a wine cellar in the basement of her home is a wonderful little touch. Adham’s luxurious apartment, his and Eva’s beauty, and their absolute romantic power over the other characters makes them seem to be in a battle that humans can only helplessly watch. While the film’s end does illustrate that all may not be as it appears, The Light Thief nonetheless allows for its audience to pause and ponder its elaborate, menacing, elegant details, a rarity in a short film. In this way, the film opens myth out into the objects of the real world, without sacrificing its strangeness and magic.