This is a movie that may be under another name, "Secrets in the family". I would say this movie is watchable, but not cohesive.
There is a familiarity of the story: a young woman/nurse gratefully takes on a role as a caregiver to an elderly lady, who has two adult, sullen children. The hiring process reveals a very embittered family dynamic, and this extends to how they treat this young woman, Ana.
Ana is facing constant harsh quips from her charge, as well as from her 'boss', the lady's daughter who hired Ana. Ana befriends her other 'boss', the lady's grown son. He is much more amiable, which is when the average viewer will immediately predict the plot. Most of us know the son is up to nothing great, because of the overt displays of how kind he seems. This is too good to be true. Another player is the caretaker of the family estate, who is incredibly strange and angry from the start at Ana.
Locals are wary of this family and their tendency to cause trouble for others. We as viewers aren't aware of how this manifests, but we can reasonably see that the caretaker has some sort of vendetta against almost everyone - he must be the one that has suffered in some way.
This ends up being true, but there is more to the story involving the adult daughter and this caretaker, as well as the downfall of the nice son, who turns into scary son.
Ana is likeable and believable, with the patience of a saint. I love this actress just from this movie alone; she has a super sweet disposition that strikes me as familiar. She may seem 'too nice to be true', but I know people like her and they are real. She just needed a job and was grateful, and clearly dedicated to her profession.
The siblings are incredibly unbelievable. The anger and interactions are forced, and not at all realistic. The initial scenes where everyone is so rude to each other are just comical. It sounded like grown ups pretending to be in 3rd grade.
I didn't understand (I may have missed it) what 'secrets' there are in this family; yes, the ending (I won't spoil) indicates wrongdoing, so I suppose that is the family 'secret', along with how others were wronged in the journey of this family's past. But if you are looking for something truly unexpected, it's not going to happen.
Also, the character of the caretaker was absolutely of no value; he did serve as a plot device, but in terms of his actual value or why there would be a connection between him and the adult daughter is baffling.
The ending of the movie, unfortunately, doesn't wrap up as well as it could have. We see that Ana is happily in a relationship, but there was no tie-in that would help us really appreciate this development in any real way. (I wasn't surprised she would be happily in a relationship, and this was just a "ok... and?" moment for me).
I unfortunately didn't buy the connection in the end between Ana and the adult daughter. It would be so nice if it were real, but this just didn't seem believable, as the daughter had nary a kind bone in her body previously. It seems very unlikely to see her become this warm and kind person at the end.
The good aspects of this movie:
- interesting dynamic between Ana and the elderly mom;
- likeability for Ana
- attractive setting/scenery for those who appreciate these details
- though minor, I loved the relationship between Ana and her good friend / fellow nurse. There wasn't a good reason for her presence, but she could have had a more developed role and the movie would have been all the better for that.
