“Marshland” First-Rate Spanish Crime Thriller
By Skip Sheffield
“Marshland” is the best motion picture to come out of Spain
in many years. Now this gripping, often gruesome crime thriller has made it to
the USA. South Florida had it first when it was a big hit at the 2015 Miami
International Film Festival. Friday, Aug. 21 it opens at Movies of Delray,
Movies of Lake Worth and Cinema Paradiso.
“La Isla Minima” as it is known in Spanish, is set in
September, 1980 in the desolate, swampy, Andalusian lowlands of southern Spain
at the tail end of the Gen. Franco regime. Two police homicide detectives from Madrid
have been sent to investigate the disappearance of two teenage girls last seen
at a local fiesta. The mission begins inauspiciously. When the cops’ car breaks
down, they lose one of their hotel reservations and the mismatched duo is
forced to bunk together.
Juan (Javier Gutierrez) is the older, much hotter-tempered, more reckless cop. Pedro is the younger, much calmer and more circumspect cop. You could call
them a good cop/bad cop duo. It doesn’t take the detectives long to discover
there are “extenuating circumstances” to the girls’ disappearance. They had
gone missing before but always returned. It wasn’t just a random disappearance.
They girls were unhappy and they were behaving recklessly. The mother of the
girls (Maria Varod) slips Pedro some damaged 35 mm film negatives that offer
proof the girls were seeing men they shouldn’t see and going places they
shouldn’t go. Their home life is turbulent. Their father (Perico Cervantes) is
strict and disapproving and may be in some trouble of his own.
It doesn’t take long for the detectives discover murder most
foul. The girls were raped, tortured and mutilated before they were killed, and
they were not the only girls to meet such a grisly fate.
“Marshland” is a cracking good murder mystery with many a
plot twist set in a time when Spain was moving from Franco’s repressive,
corrupt dictatorship to a more liberal, democratic government. Juan symbolizes
the old regime. Pedro is the new. In the middle are a lot of bad people, some
of them connected directly to the throne of power. Like its setting,
“Marshland” is dark, murky and creepy, yet it has an eerie beauty.
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