1976

Aline Küppenheim turns in quite an impressive performance here as the middle class woman, married to a doctor, who finds herself embroiled in some clandestine activities at the height of the Pinochet administration in Chile. All she actually wants to do is get their beach house repainted, but when the local priest (Hugo Medina) approaches "Carmen" and asks her to take care of an injured young man, she finds herself exposed to quite a few dangers as she discovers "Elías" (Nicolás Sepúlveda) has a bullet hole in him and is on the run with the police looking for him. Over the next ninety minutes we get quite a sense of the peril in which she has to live; of her nervously sneaking about watching her own every move; telling lies and swapping buses when she travelled - all more akin to something from a John Le Carré novel rather than life in a supposedly civilised 1970s nation. What adds to the effectiveness of this drama is the fact that aside from some television actuality, we see little of the actual oppressiveness of the regime. It's the changes in her behaviour and her attitude to the young "Elías" that subtly embeds the sense of menace throughout the film. I didn't love the soundtrack and some might not like the inconclusiveness of the denouement, but I found that - like life in this turmoil-ridden country itself, made it all the more potent. Worth a watch.

Director Manuela Martelli quickly and nicely establishes that we are in Chile during the 1970s with news headlines from black and white tv's pointing to the country in turmoil. We meet a well-dressed Carmen who is planning to redecorate her family's summer house while her husband, a doctor, is away for work. When the local priest asks her to help care for a young man with a gun wound, she accepts without question, lies to get some antibiotics and gets in deeper over her head the longer she helps out. Aline Küppenheim gives a subtle performance for what evolves into a complex character that travels around in a world filled with paranoia. There's a theme with shoes throughout the film whether it's Carmen's expensive high heels splattered with paint or one found with a hole in its soul/sole that contrasts class differences. We know it's during the Pinochet regime and though the danger is rarely if seen at all, there's always a sense of mystery and fear surrounding everything. Carmen doesn't know who to trust or if anyone around her is secretly watching her. You could almost say that the tension is Hitchcockian since we've seen a variety of shoes and don't know exactly when the next one will drop.

This movie features an excessive amount of of little scenes that hint at, or foreshadow, something sinister, but that are never referenced again later on. They open a "plot thread" in the viewer's mind (e.g. "this person is suspicious", but since that person will never appear again to confirm or refute the viewer's initial hypothesis, the loose thread is never tied). It's the accumulation of these that makes for a frustrating experience by the end. It's as if the director expected the viewer to have forgotten most of those little occurrences by the end... shame on the director for underestimating the audience.

The protagonist's motives are never really explained and her personality is barely showcased, making for a flat main character that the viewer doesn't really empathize with. She comes across as just a generic, blasé, and cold rich woman that does the things she does because... reasons.

The scenes sometimes feel poorly connected to each other, with sudden jumps in time that skip over important things that (presumably) happened, but which are never shown, leaving the viewers to have to fill the gaps themselves. "Discontinuous" is perhaps the word I'm looking for.

A decidedly disappointing experience.

Great story with an equally mysterious plot. Carmen visits her house by the big blue to get off of regular life and picks a red paint for walls then tame it with hints of blue. She freezes at screams and her husband gets upset when resistance is called out by a friend in the presence of Carmen. A great story that shows how sacrifices opens the eyes of a sleepwalking masses. Excellent colour tone in visuals and great cinematography capturing expressions well. Unique use of sound effects signaling the tensions kept restrained breaking free. It's a great look at how life was from the outside of recent revolution how social views changed and should change. Excellent.

The film is a stunning portrayal of the inherent, ubiquitous vein of violence in a country experiencing oppression - how it is built into strata of fear and a collusive silence, where everyone has to play a role, rather than be authentic. Every little detail is a description of this experience, a metaphor or picture of how the venom of a violence-based power removes legitimacy from not just government but from the structure of society, even the family itself. The camera work and art direction are exquisite, as is the haunting score and the beautiful costumes. The writing too, elliptical and shorthand helps you grasp the social meanings without ever being heavy-handed. At the end, you feel you can barely breathe from all the tension - much like it must feel to live in a police state.