There’s a very specific subgenre of movie that lives and dies on how much time you can tolerate spending with a self-sabotaging mess of a person. The great ones make that discomfort feel like the point, while still giving you a rope to hold onto, whether it’s raw talent, an undeniable charisma, or a narrative engine that keeps the spiral from turning monotonous. Simón Mesa Soto’s A Poet wants to sit in that lane, and for stretches it absolutely does. It is dry, awkward, and often sharply observed about ego and obsession. It is also, for me, a tough hang in a way that never quite alchemizes into something I’d want to revisit.
The film follows Oscar Restrepo (Ubeimar Rios), a middle-aged poet who has been living off the fumes of a past that barely counts as success. He published a couple books when he was younger, enough to convince himself he’s still a serious figure, but not enough to build a life on. Now he’s broke, erratic, and drifting. He drinks, he postures, he spirals, and he keeps chasing the validation that never arrives. Mesa Soto frames Oscar as the cliché he’s become, the artist in the shadows who mistakes martyrdom for identity.
A lifeline appears when Oscar lands a teaching gig and meets Yurlady (Rebeca Andrade), a teenage student with real ability and real voice. There’s a version of this story that becomes a warm, hard-won mentorship drama, where the older artist learns humility through nurturing someone who might actually eclipse them. A Poet is not interested in that comfort. Instead, it weaponizes the premise. Oscar recognizes Yurlady’s talent, and it messes with him. He wants to support her, but he also wants to possess the glow that comes from being adjacent to greatness. He is the type of person who mistakes proximity for purpose. He clings, he meddles, and he can’t help but turn the situation into another referendum on himself.
That’s where the movie is at its most incisive, and also where it started to lose me. Movies like Inside Llewyn Davis and Uncut Gems understand that watching a loser can be exhilarating if the loser is still operating at some kind of undeniable skill, or if the world around them has a pulse that keeps the story moving even when the protagonist is suffocating. Oscar doesn’t have that same hook. The film intentionally keeps his “poet” status slippery. He’s a poet, not the poet, and the work itself is never positioned as transcendent enough to justify his ego. That’s smart, and probably closer to reality, but it also means the movie is asking you to sit with his incompetence as the main event.
Ubeimar Rios is excellent at making Oscar feel real. He is not lovable in a cute, cinematic way. He is painfully recognizable, the kind of person who confuses stubbornness for integrity and carries himself like the world owes him a debt. Rios plays that with a grating authenticity that I respected more than I enjoyed. Rebeca Andrade, on the other hand, brings an understated steadiness that keeps Yurlady from turning into a pure symbol of youth and promise. Their dynamic is the best thing the film has, partly because it never feels clean. It’s not inspirational. It’s messy, and it’s messy in a way that says much more about Oscar than it does about Yurlady.
Mesa Soto’s direction is confident in its plainness. The tone is wry and controlled, often funny in a way that sneaks up on you, but it’s also locked into Oscar’s limited emotional range. That tightness is thematically consistent, yet it can feel airless. By the time the story arrives at the inevitable truth, which is that Oscar’s ego is the real antagonist (is if there was any doubt), the theme starts to become the movie. And once that happens, the film risks feeling like an endurance test rather than a character study that keeps revealing new shades.
I get why A Poet landed where it did critically, and why it played well on the festival circuit, having premiered at Cannes in Un Certain Regard. As a statement about the way older gatekeepers can suffocate young talent while convincing themselves they’re helping, it’s pointed and effective.
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But effectiveness is not always the same as engagement. I kept waiting for the movie to pivot into something that offered even a sliver of oxygen outside of Oscar’s tunnel vision, and it mostly refuses. That refusal is arguably the bravest choice the film makes. It is also the choice that kept me at arm’s length.
I admired A Poet more than I liked it. There’s real craft here, and the lead performance is strong enough to make the discomfort feel intentional, not accidental. Still, the experience is so sealed inside its protagonist’s worst qualities that it wears thin. A good film, sometimes a frustrating one, and one I suspect will be a great litmus test for how much patience someone has for a character who cannot get out of his own way.
Score: 5/10
A Poet (2026)
- Cast: Ubeimar Rios, Rebeca Andrade, Guillermo Cardona, Alisson Correa, Margarita Soto, Humberto Restrepo
- Director: Simón Mesa Soto
- Genre: Comedy, Drama
- Runtime: 123 minutes
- Rated: R
- Release Date: January 30, 2026
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