From Argentina, an old-fashioned slick manipulative commercial entertainment that took home the Oscar for foreign film. Firm-footed, smooth-surfaced, it centers on a retired public prosecutor struggling to write a novel on a nagging 20-year-old case, the rape and murder of a newlywed schoolteacher. Generating suspense partly through its coyness as to the outcome of that case, the film shuttles between two time zones, then and now, plainly signalling the period by way of the relative blackness or grayness of the beard and hair of the leading man, Ricardo Darín, a masterly underplayer, a shrewd economizer, a dignified sublimator, once you get past his constant look of acid indigestion. In addition to Darín’s tormented hero, the film is filled with well-drawn characters: his alluring but seemingly unattainable new boss (Soledad Villamil), still at work — now a judge — and still alluring 20-odd years after the murder case; his erratic alcoholic colleague; the sarcastic tyrannical department head; the self-aggrandizing policeman; the obsessed husband of the victim; and, when at length he turns up, the hateful perpetrator. The sturdy storyline braids together a number of complementary strands — the unravelling of a mystery, for starters, with flashes of psychological and philosophical insight worthy of Simenon; political corruption (but of course) and abuse of power; unrequited love; the regrets of advanced age — en route to a satisfying if unsurprising surprise ending. Directed by Juan José Campanella. (2009) — Duncan Shepherd
This movie is not currently in theaters.