Based on the novel by Eduardo Sacheri
Screenplay by Eduardo Sacheri & Juan Jose Campanella
Directed by Juan José Campanella
Adapting novels is a funny business. For one, as a filmmaker, you have a built in audience that presumably wants to see the same story visualized. At the same time, if even a minor detail is missing, fans of the book are outraged. But if the movie runs too long, people that didn't read the novel will criticize the implementation of every small detail. In other words, you do the best adaptation your time and budget will allow, and you'll lose with some crowds. You do the best justice to the story but sacrifice some of the original words, you lose. Juan Jose Campanella decided to skip all that, and hire the writer of the book to help adapt the screenplay. Probably so if people complained, he could blame Eduardo Sacheri.
Sacheri's book, El Pregunta en el Ojos, is a big international hit, printed in 40 different languages, sold more copies than the Morman bible, etc. When it came time to adapt it into a film, mania was high, and everyone wanted to see this little Argentinian story that could.
Benjamin Esposito (Ricard Darin) has just retired as an investigator for the District Attorney in Buenos Aries, and with nothing left to do, he decides to write a novel, based on the one case that haunts him 25 years later. A school teacher, a lovely young woman named Lilliana Coloto (Carla Quevedo) is very brutally raped and murdered, devastating her husband Ricardo.
When the police arrest two lowly construction workers that weren't even at the scene the day of the crime, Benjamin gets suspicious and starts digging on his own. Ricardo, a broken man, goes every day to the train station, looking for the only man that Benjamin thinks is possible of committing such a terrible crime.
The plot is very complicated and complex, I won't bore anyone with poorly misrepresented ideas of what the movie is about on the surface. What's most important with this film is whats below the surface at all times.
You see, Benjamin's motivation for writing the novel is not just to solve it for his own purposes, but to explain how it has impacted his life, and a large part of that impact had to do with the court clerk at the time, now a judge, Irene Mendez-Hastings (Soledad Villamil) whom Benjamin has always been in love, but too polite, or scared, to express his deep love for Irene.
After years away from the Buenos Aries court, he is digging up old wounds for many people involved, but for Benjamin, these are wounds that have skipped through time all to come crashing down on him at this point in his life; facing lonliness, old age, and eventually death alone.
Superficially, the story is about solving the murder case. Beyond that, it's about people learning to repair themselves, or to avoid damaging behavior in the first place. The husband, Ricardo is played with a certain nuance that I've never seen before. In fact, the character is written in a way I've never seen before. A man broken from the rape/murder of his wife is nothing new to the world of cinema, but the way in which he approaches life after her murder is something I've never seen in a film/book before. To add to the character, he is played magnificently by Pablo Rago, a man damaged by the past, but unwilling to let the future do the same to him.
Benjamin, however, is a man obsessed with the past, a man who sees no future without the past. Irene is the only character living in the present, even if every day she might question her choices. Another key characer I haven't mentioned yet is Pablo Sandoval (Guillermo Francella), a drunken court clerk who drinks his way through the days, but is still a brilliant investigator. Sandoval is really the greased wheel that keeps the entire plot moving, and in the end he might be the most interesting character because he's willing to admit things to himself that Benjamin would never even think, let alone admit. Sandoval is the pessimist, Benjamin is the optimist.
The acting all around is fantastic, all the actors knew exactly what they were doing, and the impact that each scene held. On every note, they played it perfect. The cinematography is beautiful, most of the film is shot like a cinematographer would photograph a family vacation to a beautiful place, but the visual beauty of Buenos Aries is a stark contrast to the dark and gritty world that they begin to explore through this old case.
I haven't read the book, but my only big criticism would be the non-linear storytelling. I think conceptually, it worked. The story needed to be told from now, the present, 25 years after everything happened, and then, 25 years ago, as everything is happening. It's just the way in which they presented the film, I believe there could have been more mystery until the very end, as it stands now, it's a little messy, with the entire last half hour taking place in the present, so we lose the impact of 25 years ago when it hasn't been shown for the last quarter of the film. Like I said, I haven't read the novel, so it could have the same problem.
As for how good an adaptation this is, I imagine it's extremely well done. A lot of character detail and plot nuance is fit into 2 hours and 10 minutes, how much from the novel I'm not sure. How much was left out of the novel, I'm also not aware. But as far as translating the story to an easily digestible film for the mainstream international market, they seem to have done a damn fine job.
The direction and general design of the film work in cohesion to create distinctly different feels for Buenos Aries in the 80's and the more modernized present day. The setting easily becomes not just the place where the film was shot, but a major part of the story, since it's really about the changes that have taken place in these people, and how some of these changes were brought about because of how the city itself operates. Loved the locales used, and after everything is said and done, I would really like to visit Buenos Aries. Job well done.
9.5/10
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