El día trajo la oscuridad
Director: Martín De Salvo
Writer: Josefina Trotta
Cast: Romina Paula, Mora Recalde, Pablo Caramelo, Luciano Suardi, Marta Lubos
Part of: identities Festival
Seen on: 30.5.2015
[Screener Review]

El día trajo la oscuridad will be shown at the identities Festival in Vienna on June 16th, 2015, 22.15!

Plot:
Virginia (Mora Recalde) lives a reclusive life in a small village with her father (Pablo Caramelo),the village doctor. When they hear that Virginia’s cousin Julia has mysteriously fallen ill, her father leaves Virginia alone in the house. But Virginia isn’t alone for long. Julia’s sister Anabel (Romina Paula) is brought to her, unconscious, by a cab driver. But Anabel apparently recovers soon, though she continues to sleep during the day and go for mysterious walks at night. As Virginia and Anabel spend more time together, they also become closer, but something is not quite right.

El día trajo la oscuridad is a calm film that is rather subtle in everything. Sometimes it left me wishing for a little less subtlety and a little more clarity, though.

I think that the film was pretty much made for watching in a cinema (it certainly wasn’t made for watching as a screener with the biggest watermark I have ever seen): its calm and crisp atmosphere and the wonderful (at least as far as I could tell underneath the watermark) shots will have their full impact there, probably better able to pull you into the film than watching it at home.

At least I had my difficulties, though that is also due to the beginning of the film where the audience is just thrown into cold water. Julia’s illness doesn’t appear to be mysterious at first. Anabel’s appearance at Virginia’s is much weirder and it took me a while to understand that they knew each other and that she was brought there by taxi and not some stranger picking her up at the side of the road. (In fact, I watched the beginning twice because I thought I had missed something, but there just wasn’t more information.)

Much is left unclear in the film, many motivations left to the audience to try to figure them out. While I usually like when a film relies on the audience to make up their own mind, I felt that in this case we were left with not enough clues to come to any kind of conclusion – especially regarding Anabel’s and Virginia’s inner lives.

The atmosphere was also not quite enough to keep the film from dragging a little towards the end (even though it is rather short). Ultimately though the film felt incomplete to me – like the prologue to another, bigger story and not a film standing on its own. Maybe we’ll get a continuation – I would like to see it.

Summarizing: very good parts that don’t quite come together.