Written and Directed by: Oriol Paulo
Cast: José Coronado, Belén Rueda, Hugo Silva, Aura Garrido, Jaime Pena
Sometimes a little mystery from across the pond makes its way over here just to thrill and confuse us. This quirky item from Spain is just such a film. From the very opening, a moody, dark, misty shot, to the first-rate conclusion, it’ll suck you in and keep you guessing. And, after you do figure out ‘who done it’, you’ll still be twisting as to why it all happened all the way to the end credits. It’s a true Hitchcock/De Palma style psychological thriller complete with a missing body, morose Detectives, power wielding executives, a killer or two, forbidden love, and lots of clever misdirection.
Yes, it’s in Spanish, and yes it’s with English subtitles, but the visuals are so striking and the acting so compelling, you’ll know what’s happening even if you miss a few sentences here and there. This is an exceptional thriller, the type of film that’s been missing from cinema for a while. Nice to see it back again, and so well done.
Here’s the storyline:
It’s a dark night, no moon, misty fog lies upon the ground and all is still. Suddenly a man appears fleeing something in a panic, he runs onto a dark road and is hit by a truck. When the police arrive they discover that he is the Night Watchman at the nearby morgue. When they backtrack to his workplace they find that one of the bodies, Mayka Villaverde (Belen Rueda), a married society woman with lots of corporate holdings, has disappeared before an autopsy could be performed. The deceased’s husband, Alex (Hugo Silva), is under suspicion of stealing the corpse to hide his complicity in her death. Over the course of a long evening in the morgue, a detective (Jose Coronado) struggles to wring a confession out of the husband and the suspect is tormented by bizarre discoveries of evidence that point to his guilt. Someone is setting up incriminating clues around the building, and Alex is convinced it’s his wife, still alive and spoiling for revenge.
Ok, so you can see the plot is rife with delicious clues and contradictions that you as the audience and they as the detectives must muddle through to get at the whole truth, if there is one. The performances are terrific as well, as sharply drawn as the visuals the director uses to illustrate the story. You’ll find “The Body” to be classic detective fiction with a dusting of the paranormal that leads to a relatively simple, but completely un-guessable, explanation.
My take, it’s only playing at a few theaters around town, see it while you can, it won’t be around long and you don’t want to miss the fun of it.
