Magical Girl

While the direction of this film was too cold and distant to resonate with me as much as it could've, I still enjoyed enough about it to give it a recommendation. For one, I enjoyed Barbara as the emotional core. Most films would have her start off in good health and have her mental health decline more and more throughout the film. In this film though, she was already unstable and Luis's behavior made her go from bad to worse. For instance, after she intentionally cuts her head on a mirror, Javier comments on it being another scar and later in the film when she's asked to disrobe, we see that her body is full of scars. Given those scenes, it's clear she had been suffering long before she encountered Luis. While Luis's control over Barbara is quite apparent though, Javier, her husband, is guilty of this as well. His monitoring of whether she takes her pills starts out as seemingly innocuous. The more he escalates though, the more paranoid he seems (a scene where he feels inside her mouth to make sure she swallowed a pill is super uncomfortable to watch). Another interesting thing about the film is the struggle which several characters face at finding closure or satisfaction. To list examples of this theme would involve spoiling major parts of the film, but that extensions of it pop up in smaller moments, like Luis missing an important radio broadcast from his daughter, or some unexplainable moments, like the final scene, is quite impressive. As mentioned at the start, the coldness of this film kept me from loving it, but while I'm not sure I'll revisit it again, I did enjoy my time with it.