Benjamin: Was it worth it?
Morales: Forget about it. Forget it! Who cares? My wife is dead! Your friend is dead too! Gomez is dead! They're all dead! Stop dwelling on it! You'll start wondering if you could have stopped it. You'll have a thousand pasts and no future! Forget about it, trust me. You'll end up with only memories.
Benjamin Esposito (Ricardo Darin) is assigned a case in which a beautiful young woman has been brutally badgered to death. When Benjamin sees the naked body of the woman, he takes it personally and it's something that'll stay with him for the rest of his life. And then there's the young assistant to the judge, Irene (Soledad Villamil), to whom he reports. When two scapegoats are convicted to close the case, Benjamin requests Irene to reopen the case as he isn't convinced they had the right guy. As they work together on the case, Benjamin starts developing feelings for her even though she is about to get married. Even though Irene is his superior and much well paid than him, yet younger in age, she also keeps sending mixed signals to Benjamin.
25 years later they meet again - Benjamin is older, wiser, yet hasn't recovered from what hit them in that old case and although he has survived a broken marriage, he still hasn't managed to let go of neither the case nor Irene. Irene is mature too, happy with kids - though still living in an empty marriage. 25 years back when they had caught the real killer, Gomez (Javier Godino), he escaped the trial since he seemed to be some kind of a protected informant for the state police. Benjamin's partner and friend, Sandoval (Guillermo Francella) ends up brutally killed just hours after Gomez's release. When Benjamin makes sure Irene is sent away from the place to stay safe from the killer, he still isn't sure what kept the killer from getting back at him ever. Benjamin starts writing a memoir and revisits the case to make sense of what might have happened and also his short romance with Irene. As he is still searching for an ending for his book, there's one piece of the puzzle missing until then.
The director, Juan Jose Campanella, intentionally hasn't led the movie in a single direction to make it a tense thriller. By adding scenes of the lost love between Benjamin and Irene, it makes the story more real. As both Benjamin and Irene rue over the things that were left unsaid (Irene less visibly so), it shows us those wasted years as we can see Benjamin's cards turning from "temo" to "te amo". Overall a great movie and I'm not sure what all the fuss was about when it won the 2010 Academy award for best foreign film category. I can only watch The White Ribbon and then comment.
Rating: 7.5/10
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