An outstanding performance from Aline Küppenheim is the driving force in this engrossing suspense drama-thriller about an elegant and prosperous woman being drawn into Chile’s anti-Pinochet resistance in 1976. It is a terrific feature debut from performer turned director Manuela Martelli, who herself acted opposite Küppenheim in the film Machuca, which was set in Chile in 1973, the time of the Allende overthrow. But this film has more bite.
Küppenheim plays Carmen, the stylish wife of a Santiago hospital doctor, currently working on the redecoration of the family’s holiday home by the sea, where she and her family mingle with reactionary friends of her husband’s from the local yacht club. Slightly imperiously, she lectures the contractor in his workshop on the exact shade of red paint she needs and as she does so, there is a terrified shout outside in the street and a squeal of tyres as someone is taken away by the secret police; everyone (including Carmen) looks away and goes into the woozy state of shock and denial that was commonplace among so many middle-class Chileans. (The enigmatic resemblance of the red paint to blood is echoed later when Carmen is using red food colouring in her kitchen.)
