8/10
When a film beats The White Ribbon and Un Prophete to the Best Foreign film Oscar, then it has to be pretty damn good. This is pretty damn good. Not necessarily as good as the other two, but at least worthy to keep them company. And also a lot more commercial.
Ricardo Darin, who has appeared in numerous excellent Argentinian movies (Nine Queens, XXY) is a lawyer coming to the end of his career who is obsessed by the case he never solved, in which a beautiful young woman was raped and murdered. He goes back over the case, and what went wrong and what could have happened differently. His life is complicated by his feelings for a woman who was once his colleague and is now a judge, while in the wider political world, the rise of a right wing government creates unexpected problems.
I'm trying not to give too much away, but I will say that the film is elaborate, clever, emotionally sophisticated, well acted and compulsive viewing. I don't think it's a masterpiece like the other two films which didn't win the Oscar, but it is extremely good.
