In times of mass globalization, one of the fastest-growing industries is the film industry. Modern cinema encourages ethnic diversity and the distribution of foreign films, so by now, there are enough worthy alternatives to the Hollywood film industry. One such film is Oriol Paulo’s Spanish work, Contratiempo (2016), which tells a crime detective story about a murder (Paulo, 2016). The storyline is based on a young businessman Adrian Doria’s attempt to prove his innocence in the murder of his lover to a hired lawyer. The investigation and evidence do indicate that Doria engaged in the murder, but the man is convinced otherwise. To strategize a legal defense, Doria hires a top-notch attorney, Virginia Goodman, and meets with her on the eve of trial in her apartment. During the discussion, Doria honestly tells the story of the joint murder of another man named Daniel Garrido. It was an accidental traffic accident that killed Garrido; Doria and her lover threw his body into a lake. However, Garrido’s father became suspicious of the young couple, had several clues, and tried to extort them. During a planned exchange of silence for money, Garrido’s father accidentally kills his lover and hits Doria hard so that he loses consciousness. During this story, attorney Goodman listens intently to her client and asks tricky questions. She records the man’s speech on a tape recorder, and as she walks away from Doria, the man realizes that, in fact, he has just told the whole murder story not to the actual lawyer but to a fake. In particular, the woman who listened to and recorded all of Doria’s testimony was actually the mother of the roadkill Danielle Garrido. The film ends with the real lawyer Virginia Goodman knocking on Doria’s door.
It is true that Hispanic works do not have as wide a following as American films, so local filmmakers must use more rhetorical devices and effects to appeal to a mass audience. Contratiempo (2016) is an excellent demonstration of admirable directing that holds the viewer’s attention throughout the film. Oriol Paulo managed to create a unique synthesis of two genres, a thriller with a focus on suspense and a detective. From a detective perspective, Contratiempo sticks to the classic line where murder is told at the beginning of the story, and then the viewer is introduced to the investigation and the aftermath. From a suspense-thriller perspective, the picture keeps the audience in suspense as not all the details of the murder are familiar, with the viewer becoming increasingly convinced that each side has its own dark motives. Paulo uses a layered narrative model where increased details of the overall picture become known over time — another random traffic accident is followed by the appearance of unfamiliar faces, extortion, and eventually another murder. This makes us think that the story will never be told in its entirety, as there is still some untold part of it.
A remarkable achievement of the film is the migration of the viewer’s sympathy between Doria and Goodman: each of the characters’ utterances makes us either believe in them or suspect them even more. As a result, the atmosphere of tension, understatement, and incessant doubt stay with the viewer until the very end. Ultimately, Paulo creates a superb picture of mind games and manipulation to avoid lying. Furthermore, through such a convoluted, multifaceted narrative, the director manages to convey the simple truth that lying is immoral and will never lead to a happy conclusion.
Reference
Paulo, O. (2016). Contratiempo [The Invisible Guest] [Film]. Warner Bros. Pictures.