This is available to watch instantly on netflix. I strongly suggest you do. Adjust your top ten lists from last year accordingly.
After a couple brief scenes and an accident where we are not shown exactly what happened, the film drops us into an Argentinian woman's (Vero) life without so much as a word about who's who or what's what. Every shot offers a scrap of dialogue, or a gesture or glance that gives little key details. What emerges isn't simply a portrait of her, but of the world she inhabits. In fact, looking back I would say, although we don't get confirmation right away, what happened and who Vero is are actually established in those first few impeccable scenes. The mystery and intrigue is built around understanding the world around her.
(spoiler territory)
From the beginning there was little doubt Vero killed a child. Although the reverse look shows only a dog in the road, the faint handprints on the window, whether they were the boy's or not (she had just come from a gathering where children were present), as well as how distinctly unsettled she is, strongly suggest to the audience that something tragic happened. That she knows it, but either will not admit it or is too stricken to do so right away. She goes and gets an x-ray, checks into a hotel where she sleeps with a man who we later find out is not her husband, we discover she is a dentist, and so on. She is in such a state she can barely acknowledge anyone in most moments, but nobody really seems to notice.
A little later she becomes a little more responsive, a little more present. She confesses to her husband what she thinks happened, and they go to the site but find only the dog. She confesses to her lover, but he can find no reports of a dead child. For us some hope creeps in. But when we see shots of the canal near the accident site filled up with storm water, we have our suspicion reaffirmed. The boy must be under that water. Sure enough, soon after there is something clogging a drain in the canal, the investigators think it could be a person or a calf. Vero doesn't stick around to find out. What was hope for us is plausible deniability for Vero's conscience.
Shortly thereafter Vero begins reassembling her life back to the status quo. She goes back to work. She gives her hair a new dye job. Her husband gets her car fixed. She attends a gathering at the hotel where she went after the accident and slept with her lover, but when she asks the clerk, there is no record of her staying there.
In the end there is no trace of anything that happened that day.
The sense I got was that Vero was a woman of wealth and privilege who felt bad over what happened but never took any responsibility for it. Instead of going to the authorities her confessions were to men who she must have known would cover things up if need be. Everything was swept under the carpet.
During the film we also learn (in the masterfully subtle, indirect ways the film doles out information) that the boy she hit was poor, and like the boy who comes to her house and relies on Vero giving him odd jobs for money or food, he probably didn't have anywhere near the level of protection or status she had. If the situation had been reversed, and Vero had ended up in the canal, we suspect the matter wouldn't have disappeared so easily.
After a couple brief scenes and an accident where we are not shown exactly what happened, the film drops us into an Argentinian woman's (Vero) life without so much as a word about who's who or what's what. Every shot offers a scrap of dialogue, or a gesture or glance that gives little key details. What emerges isn't simply a portrait of her, but of the world she inhabits. In fact, looking back I would say, although we don't get confirmation right away, what happened and who Vero is are actually established in those first few impeccable scenes. The mystery and intrigue is built around understanding the world around her.
(spoiler territory)
From the beginning there was little doubt Vero killed a child. Although the reverse look shows only a dog in the road, the faint handprints on the window, whether they were the boy's or not (she had just come from a gathering where children were present), as well as how distinctly unsettled she is, strongly suggest to the audience that something tragic happened. That she knows it, but either will not admit it or is too stricken to do so right away. She goes and gets an x-ray, checks into a hotel where she sleeps with a man who we later find out is not her husband, we discover she is a dentist, and so on. She is in such a state she can barely acknowledge anyone in most moments, but nobody really seems to notice.
A little later she becomes a little more responsive, a little more present. She confesses to her husband what she thinks happened, and they go to the site but find only the dog. She confesses to her lover, but he can find no reports of a dead child. For us some hope creeps in. But when we see shots of the canal near the accident site filled up with storm water, we have our suspicion reaffirmed. The boy must be under that water. Sure enough, soon after there is something clogging a drain in the canal, the investigators think it could be a person or a calf. Vero doesn't stick around to find out. What was hope for us is plausible deniability for Vero's conscience.
Shortly thereafter Vero begins reassembling her life back to the status quo. She goes back to work. She gives her hair a new dye job. Her husband gets her car fixed. She attends a gathering at the hotel where she went after the accident and slept with her lover, but when she asks the clerk, there is no record of her staying there.
In the end there is no trace of anything that happened that day.
The sense I got was that Vero was a woman of wealth and privilege who felt bad over what happened but never took any responsibility for it. Instead of going to the authorities her confessions were to men who she must have known would cover things up if need be. Everything was swept under the carpet.
During the film we also learn (in the masterfully subtle, indirect ways the film doles out information) that the boy she hit was poor, and like the boy who comes to her house and relies on Vero giving him odd jobs for money or food, he probably didn't have anywhere near the level of protection or status she had. If the situation had been reversed, and Vero had ended up in the canal, we suspect the matter wouldn't have disappeared so easily.
