This couldn't have been pulled off if not for the exquisite acting of the cast.
It is possibly one of the best "unreliable narrator" stories I've seen on film. It's a hard concept to do in a movie without resorting to a lot of kafka-esque dream-like sequences, and although there are definite hallucinatory aspects to the story, it mostly sticks in what APPEARS to be a linear narrative. It's only as the story evolves that you realize you probably can't trust anything you're seeing as you vacillate back and forth between one perspective of reality and another. You are led moment by moment to draw conclusions that can't really be made. There are many moments that make you realize that everything preceding them probably didn't happen, or only vaguely happened. You want to "figure it out" and you think you are being given clues, but they are merely breadcrumbs cast on water and dissipate as soon as they land.
We are led to distrust one character as his behavior is so inconsistent, but is it? Or is her grasp on reality inconsistent? The actor perfectly nails this dual nature, embodying two different personalities so fully that he is dubious in both.
I am normally not thrilled with a lot of loose ends and unanswered questions, but I think the fact that we are left never knowing what exactly happened is perfect because it places us so squarely in the mind of the protagonist who herself is completely lost. I have my theories of what really happened, which place the quasi-antagonist in a position of being neither wholly innocent nor guilty in the final reckoning, but only the filmmakers know for sure what happened before and during the story. Which is ok, because the protagonist herself doesn't know, and we are firmly entrenched in the quick-sand of her perspective. It isn't important what happened. It is only important how she feels, and we feel it with her.
"How can I believe you?" she asks at one point.
Her husband replies "You never will," with a pain so poignant that you WANT to believe him. Can you? Maybe. But maybe not.
Layered through all of it is a marvelous, sometimes impressionistic and sometimes literal story of colonialism and modern-day racism that adds to the oppressed isolation of the protagonist.
I wanted to stand up and golf clap at the inverted ending.
