Contratiempo (2016)

07 Thursday Sep 2017

Tags

Ana Wagener, Bárbara Lennie, Drama, Jose Coronado, Mario Casas, Murder, Mystery, Oriol Paulo, Review, Spain, The Invisible Guest, Thriller

aka The Invisible Guest

D: Oriol Paulo / 106m

Cast: Mario Casas, Ana Wagener, Jose Coronado, Bárbara Lennie, Francesc Orella, David Selvas, Iñigo Gastesi, San Yélamos

Early on in Contratiempo, murder suspect Adrián Doria (Casas) is caught out in a lie by the defence attorney, Virginia Goodman (Wagener), who has been hired to keep him out of prison. Having recounted the circumstances in which he came to be accused of the murder of his lover, Laura Vidal (Lennie), Doria is surprised to find that Virginia isn’t convinced that he’s told her the whole truth. It’s only when she shows him a newspaper article about a young man who is missing that the certainty of his story begins to waver, and the viewer begins to realise that they can’t trust anything that they’re being told. The basic premise – Doria and Laura are coerced into meeting up in a hotel room to hand over money to a blackmailer who knows about their affair, only for Laura to end up killed by an unknown assailant and all the evidence pointing to Doria – is soon expanded on to involve a car accident, a cover up, the aforementioned missing young man, grieving parents, a locked room mystery, and a race against time to get Doria’s story “straight” before he’s called before a judge in a matter of three hours.

The events that have led to Laura’s death are recounted in detail as Virginia goads and cajoles Doria into remembering the details of what happened, and tries to put together a defence that will see the charges against him dismissed. She’s taken his case as a favour to his lawyer, and has a one hundred per cent success rate in keeping her clients out of jail. As the story unfolds, and with revelations coming thick and fast, director Paulo’s script keeps the viewer guessing as to the truth of Doria’s recollections and also Virginia’s assertions when she believes he’s lying to her (often she already seems to know more about the case than Doria has revealed). Paulo has assembled a tale that continually keeps shifting, as each retelling of events adds further layers of uncertainty and mystery to proceedings, and Doria’s guilt – did he kill Laura or was she really the victim of someone who was able to escape from their locked hotel room? – becomes clearer and then more obscure and then clearer again as the truth changes from scene to scene.

Paulo is able to do all this thanks to his tightly constructed script, which packs in so many twists and turns and narrative sleights of hand that the viewer is in danger of missing the most important moments of all, the ones where Doria’s story trembles on the precipice of exposure, but pulls back just in time while also revealing elements of the wider truth that will ultimately be revealed in the final fifteen minutes. It’s an impressive juggling act, one that stumbles only occasionally as Paulo weaves tangled thread after tangled thread in his efforts to bamboozle the viewer and keep things up in the air. Along the way he maintains an enviable level of tension, but it’s not just through the convoluted script, but also thanks to the performances.

As the morally compromised Doria, Casas plays it deadly straight throughout, protesting Doria’s innocence of Laura’s murder with a great deal of conviction while also providing enough doubt for the viewer to be questioning both his motives and his innocence. Casas brings a much needed sincerity to the role, and proves more than capable of investing Doria with a degree of wounded pride in conjunction with a surprising vulnerability when the script requires it. He’s matched by a fierce, uncompromising performance by Wagener as the defence attorney whose zero tolerance for ambiguity or avoidance (“Your testimony has holes, and I need details”) drives the narrative forward as she pursues the truth no matter what it means for her client. Between them, the two actors play an exacting game of cat-and-mouse that sees them engage in the kind of verbal sparring that keeps audiences engrossed and the material flowing inexorably to its one-last-twist conclusion.

But even though Paulo has gone to a lot of trouble in littering his script with more red herrings than it seems possible to include, fans of this kind of mystery thriller will realise what’s going on pretty much right from the start. However, this awareness doesn’t detract from the consistently clever and successful attempts to wrongfoot the viewer in terms of why things happen as they do, and who is responsible for it all. Paulo examines much of what occurs from different perspectives and different angles, and in doing so, manages to add unexpected emotional layers to the story that help to anchor the characters’ motives and reinforce the credibility of certain scenes that might otherwise have fallen short in terms of their effectiveness.

By the time all is revealed, Contratiempo has proven to be a gripping, provocative thriller that never lets up in its efforts to keep the viewer guessing, and it does so with no small amount of skill and confidence on Paulo’s part. He’s aided greatly by Xavi Giménez’s chilly, atmospheric cinematography, and Balter Gallart’s austere production design (this is a movie that eschews bright colours in favour of muted browns and dulled pastels), and these elements all join to make the movie feel appropriately suspenseful in a dour but thankfully arresting fashion. Casas and Wagener are terrific adversaries, and there’s good support from Coronado and Lennie, both of whom provide sympathetic performances as the father of the missing young man and Doria’s unlucky mistress respectively. It’s all rounded off by an unobtrusive yet effective score by Fernando Velázquez, that adds to the overall ambience and sense of subdued menace that the movie promotes throughout.

Rating: 8/10 – a couple of forced narrative moments aside, Contratiempo is the kind of thriller that demands the viewer’s complete attention, and rewards that attention over and over; if there’s ever a Hollywood remake, rest assured it will not be as entertaining or as assured as this version is.

Unit 7 (2012)

17 Friday Apr 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

1992 World Expo, Alberto Rodríguez, Antonio de la Torre, Corruption, Crime, Drama, Drugs, Joaquín Núñez, José Manuel Poga, Mario Casas, Police, Review, Seville, Spain, Thriller, Violence

Original title: Grupo 7

D: Alberto Rodríguez / 95m

Cast: Antonio de la Torre, Mario Casas, Joaquín Núñez, José Manuel Poga, Inma Cuesta, Lucía Guerrero, Estefanía de los Santos, Alfonso Sánchez, Julián Villagrán, Carlos Olalla

Seville, 1987. With five years to go before the city plays host to the 1992 World Expo, the authorities are determined to root out any and all crime in the city, and particularly the drugs trade. Spearheading this attempt is Unit 7, made up of four officers: tough, uncompromising Rafael (de la Torre), young, ambitious Ángel (Casas), jovial, emotional Mateo (Núñez), and vain, homophobic Miguel (Poga). Using informants such as Joaquín (Villagrán) the team begins dismantling the various dealers and suppliers that threaten the Expo’s success. But their initial busts don’t amount to very much. It’s only when they find a substantial amount of heroin at the apartment of a prostitute known as Mahogany (de los Santos), Ángel takes some of it, and the team agrees to use it to create more informants, and thereby catch more dealers and suppliers.

Over the next four years their plan comes to fruition, and to such an extent that the team are responsible for fifty per cent of all arrests made by the Seville police. But tensions arise within the group as Rafael, nominally the group’s leader, is challenged more and more by an increasingly erratic and unpredictable Ángel. Ángel becomes more and more intolerant of the drug dealers and the junkies, and often violently assaults them in the way that Rafael used to. But where Ángel becomes more inured to the violence, and emotionally closed off – and which affects his marriage to Elena (Cuesta) – Rafael becomes more relaxed and indifferent, due to his relationship with a young junkie, Lucía (Guerrero).

The team’s high arrest rate also begins to attract the attention of Internal Affairs, and the team find themselves being followed. With an increasing media spotlight on them as well, a misguided raid on a home in the suburbs causes them to lose some of their credibility (and sense of invincibility). And when Ángel becomes the target of someone who knows why the team are so successful, and is prepared to use terror tactics to undermine them, their efficiency continues to falter. When they’re ambushed and humiliated in a similar fashion that they used to intimidate some junkies once before, and the identity of their tormentor is revealed, it leads to Ángel and Rafael going back to deal with their tormentor once and for all.

Incorporating contemporary footage of the World Expo site being developed and built over the years between 1987 and 1992, Unit 7 provides a social, political and historical perspective to its story that adds some degree of depth to the material, and while this is to be applauded, the episodic nature of the story ultimately works against it, leaving the viewer wanting to know more about the characters and their motivations, and with the feeling that there’s a lot more going on behind the scenes than we ever get to see or know about.

The trickiest (and not entirely convincing) aspect of all is the character of Ángel, set up as the rookie of the group and suitably naïve when the movie begins. An unfortunate encounter with a drug dealer leaves his lack of experience exposed, and his attempts to gain promotion are hampered by his diabetes – a plot device which is used in such a haphazard manner it might as well not be mentioned. But from the moment he picks up the pack of heroin and hides it he becomes a different man: arrogant for the most part and acting more like a vigilante than a cop. It’s a swift, unexpected change in direction, and while it helps set up the rest of the movie, appears too much out of the blue for comfort.

In contrast, Rafael’s turn to the “softer” side is given more room to develop, and while his relationship with Lucía provides more of an emotional component for the movie than it has anywhere else, the whole thing ultimately doesn’t go anywhere and leaves Rafael just as embittered and alone as he was at the beginning. With Mateo equalling comedy relief and Miguel placed firmly in the background, screenwriter Rafael Cobos’ more random approach to characterisation has the effect of distancing the viewer from the team, even though strong efforts are made to show their camaraderie and their combined sense of purpose. Certainly the cast, all well chosen for their roles, put in strong, confident portrayals – with de la Torre and de los Santos proving especially convincing – and make more of their roles than the script allows for.

Thankfully, Cobos’ script does work extremely well in its attempts to portray the effort made to break up various drugs rings and the kind of intimidation and violence that goes with it. The team regularly use excessive force, and while it’s probably not a misrepresentation of the times or the police attitude towards criminals, the savagery of their actions is remarkably one-sided – even when their tormentor reveals himself he doesn’t treat them as harshly as he was by them. This difference again has the effect of distancing the viewer from the group, and their subsequent actions, plus their ultimate fate come 1992, lacks the resonance it should have had.

That said, the action scenes are well-mounted, and Rodríguez shows a flair for unusual camera angles that makes – in particular – the opening rooftop chase such a visceral and propulsive experience to watch. With so many movies like this being made across the world (and too many in the US), Rodríguez’ visual acuity helps lift the movie above many of its competitors, and while this is his first attempt at making a película policial, bodes well enough if he should decide to make another. Aided by regular collaborators DoP Alex Catalán and composer Julio de la Rosa, Rodríguez has fashioned a hard-hitting, if emotionally distant crime drama that, fortunately, scores more often than it misses.

Rating: 7/10 – though struggling to offer a connection for the viewer on an emotional level, Unit 7 does provide a solid, impactful ride for most of its running time; with a firm sense of place and time, and an often impressive look and feel to it, this movie is still worth tracking down.