Nicolas Pedrero-Setzer
I think the film and its characters reach far more interesting places when they do not seek logical answers to Laura’s disappearance or try to solve its mysteries. It’s as if resolving the mystery would confer a small death upon the film because it would lose the very question it’s chasing the whole time.
Mostly using shots in which witnesses sharing their testimonies turn their backs turned to the camera, de la Orden emphasizes their spoken memory while avoiding a visual exhibition of atrocities.
The focus on the packaging and commodification of these plants and vegetables demystifies the agrestal fantasy of so many of our products. At first numbing, Ortín’s images of rote mechanical production begin accruing a subtlesense of dread, appearing as an unbroken and uncaring process.