Starring: Javier Gutierrez, Raul Arevalo
Distributor: Vendetta Films
Runtime: 105 mins. Reviewed in Jun 2015
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Marshland was the winner of several awards, especially in Spain, its country of origin.
Audiences always enjoy a solid detective investigation as well is an interesting murder mystery. Marshland provides these – and, with its setting in Andalucia and the marsh country, many audiences who appreciated the television series, True Detective, make some links.
The setting is very important, the strange marshlands and the people who live and work there, something of an isolated community. The time setting is also very important. It is 1980, four years after the end of the Franco regime which dominated Spain for four decades, the period of repression under fascist government. At this stage, the people are not used to the new freedoms and the film makes explicit allusions to police activity in the past, putting down protests, shooting people, torturing them and the cover-ups. It emerges that one of the detective sent to solve the current mystery had been a vigorous police torturer, something he denies, but proof is given that the accusation is true.
The film opens with overhead shots of the marshlands, looking like artificial diagrams, but with the camera slowly descending to the waterways, the fields, the intersections. And, on one of the roads, the detectives experiencing a car breakdown, and taken into the town.
The murder mystery concerns two teenage girls who disappeared, but their bodies, violated and mutilated, are soon found. It soon emerges that other girls have disappeared, parents upset and distraught.
The film shows the two detectives, quite different in personality, the older one more assured with a touch of humour and enjoying life, the other one in his 30s, much more serious, concerned about possible promotion to Madrid and phoning his pregnant wife.
Parents are interviewed. Other school students are also interviewed. Various characters in the town come under suspicion, and detection leads to a hunting lodge and an abandoned hut on the property. Some negatives of photos are found, indicating sexual behaviour. Brochures are also found from a company which is soliciting responses from young girls for better jobs in the city.
One of the characters in the town is a writer, imagining that he might become a Truman Capote, writing a ‘real life’ book about the crimes and investigations. He is particularly helpful in collaborating with the police, developing photos, giving information about the town.
The film is in delineating the characters of the two men, their capacity for working together, the differences in their temperaments. The local authorities want the crimes solved. Some of the people in the town become more suspicious as the investigation goes on, including a dangerous car pursuit at the night on the marshes.
Ultimately, the further victim is rescued, the mystery solved, the police are acclaimed and become famous in the newspapers.
But, along with the detection and the solved mystery, the film is most interesting in its re-creation of the place, the period, the people and the aftermath of the Franco regime.
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