Convento is an unusual experimental film that conjures the free-floating aura of a dream, only without the stylized, hyper-symbolic imagery that we generally associate with films attempting to convey dream states. The director Jarred Alterman has, in fact, taken the opposite approach: His compositions are gorgeous and surreal in their plainness and rational tactility. Convento captures the casually reassuring pleasure, as well as the potentially disconcerting oddness, of seeing something commonplace anew.
