Directed by Juan Jose Campanella
Benjamin Esposito (Ricardo Darin) comes across as a person who is shouldering a great burden. He has just retired from his position as a criminal court investigator in Buenos Aires and has decided to write a novel based on an unresolved case that has haunted him for the last 25 years. It was a terrible case of rape and murder of a newly-married young woman compounded by a miscarriage of justice. Benjamin and his side-kick Sandoval (Guillermo Francella) solved the case and prosecutor Irene Menendez (Soledad Villamil) brought the perpetrator to justice, but dark forces had taken control of the judicial system even before the 1976 coup that put the military in control of the country.
Flashbacks to the mid-seventies fill in the details of the cold case as Benjamin continues to unearth people from the past to answer some of the questions it left unsolved. As Benjamin commits words to paper, he has to revisit his younger self and the regrets about that time in his life. In particular, he has to confront his enduring feelings for former colleague Irene that had to be censored because of the class divide and, apart from being his boss, she was engaged to be married. Actually, it is the thread of unrequited love that all the main characters have in common, and everyone has secrets that only their eyes fail to cover up.
This Argentinean film won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film and director Campanella points out that his film has a parallel with what is going on today. ‘Fear is a big part of their world. The characters do many things they do and accept many things they accept out of fear.’ It is only when the characters in the story have nothing to lose that things get really interesting.
Lezly Herbert
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