A Common Crime [Un crimen común]

There are echoes of Lucrecia Martel’s The Headless Woman in this gripping tale of class divisions and ethical responsibility in contemporary Argentina.

Middle-class economics lecturer Cecilia lives with her young son, Juan. Housekeeper Nebe helps out with chores and childcare. One stormy night, Nebe’s son knocks at the door, but Cecilia doesn’t let him in. On hearing that he has been ‘disappeared’ by the police, she is forced to face the consequences of a decision that betrays wider systematic inequalities.

A formal and disarming brilliance characterises director Francisco Márquez’s eerie treatment of the aftermath of ‘the crime’, with a heightened sense of paranoia increasingly evident as Cecilia’s calm exterior begins to crack. Elisa Carricajo (La Flor) is spellbinding as this troubled protagonist, capturing in the most minimal of gestures the interior turmoil that Márquez projects so effectively through the film’s visual and sonic landscapes.