a film by Juan José Campanella
When a retired criminal prosecutor decides to try writing a novel he finds himself inextricably drawn into the harrowing events of an unsolved crime from twenty-five years before. Benjamín Esposito has spent his entire working life as a criminal court employee. He can draw on his own past as a civil servant for a true, moving and tragic story in which he was once very directly involved. Re-investigating the brutal rape and murder of a beautiful woman, he discovers devastated lives, corrupt government officials and a lost love. But as he delves deeper he finds himself at the dark heart of society, where mysteries lurk in the shadows and danger waits around every corner.
In 1974, Esposito's court was assigned an investigation into the death of a beautiful young woman, Liliana Coloto, raped and murdered inside her house in a district of Buenos Aires. He meets Ricardo Morales, who had married the girl a short time before and worshipped her, body and soul. Moved by Ricardo's grief, Esposito vows to find the killer and bring him to justice despite having to contend with the apathy and ineptitude of the police and legal system. He knows that for help he can count on Pablo Sandoval, an underling at the office yet a close friend, who occasionally seeks release from the routine of his existence by drinking himself unconscious. He can also turn to the upper-class, Cornell-educated Irene Menéndez Hastings, his immediate superior and secretary of the court, with whom he is secretly deeply in love, although there is no hope that she will ever love him.
Argentina in the 1970s is a backdrop for the violence, hate, revenge and death that rule people's lives and fates, and Esposito's investigation takes him deep into a world of terrible violence. No longer an observer, he becomes an unwilling central character in a drama in which he is exposed to ever-greater danger. Although he is aware that historical accuracy is not paramount for his novel, the process of revisiting the case is more an issue of closure for him. As Esposito writes, he relives a past that rises up before his eyes and awakens all his demons. As he moves forward, he begins to see that it is now too late to stop. Telling a story from the past is no longer just a diversion to fill his empty hours. It becomes a narrow, winding path he must take if he is to understand and find justification for his own life, if he is to give any meaning to the years remaining to him, and if once and for all he is to confront the feelings he has for the woman who, twenty-five years on, he is still in love with.
Strewn with ingenious twists and turns, this award-winning crime thriller and love story is a stunning and suspenseful cinematic tour de force exploring themes of memory, corruption, punishment and justice, and how the past is always with us, ever-present in our lives.
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