European Films

Three female detectives rummage around in their own lives as much as in the lives of others in Icíar Bollaín’s Mataharis, the director's first film since her laurelled domestic abuse drama Te doy mis ojos (Take My Eyes). While a female perspective is still a welcome change in Spain’s cinematic landscape, having three different female protagonists is perhaps too much, as Bollain and Tatiana Rodríguez’ screenplay only succeeds in reducing each woman’s story to its soap-opera essentials, with the detective bureau-setting adding to the TV-series feel. Acting from the three leads is far above the average TV series from Spain (or elsewhere), but is not enough to disguise the basic small-screen appeal of Mataharis. The film did middling business in Spain upon its release in September. It opens today in Belgium and will open in August in the Netherlands.

 

Eva (singer Najwa Nimri, 20 centímetros / 20 Centimetres) has just returned to work at the detective agency Valbuena after having had her second child with her husband Iñaki (Tristán Ulloa, Lucía y el sexo / Sex and Lucia). She finds juggling her responsibilities very hard and her controlling character does not make it any easier: she never lets Iñaki do any work but then resents him for not doing anything. When a mysterious woman called Marta appears in Iñaki’s life, Eva starts an investigation into her spouse’s secret life.

 

Ambitious 20-something Inés (redhead María Vázquez, La noche del hermano) wants to get higher up in the agency but when she has to infiltrate a large multinational, her professional conscience and her amorous feelings for the man she is nominally investigating (Diego Martín, Días de fútbol) turn her life into a Moebius strip of indecision.

 

The eldest of the three women, Carmen (Nuria González, Pudor), starts to question her loveless marriage to Alberto (Adolfo Fernández, Hable con ella / Talk to Her) when on a routine investigation of the business partner and wife of average Joe photographer Sergio (Antonio de la Torre, Volver).

 

Of the three stories, Eva and Iñaki's is the most involving, mainly because of the strong complicity between Nimri and Ulloa. Their characters’ lives seem to visibly erode by the minute from the couple’s dulling everyday routine. Besides many relatively adult conversations, Nimri gets some big scenes in which to cry and shout (shown in some of the film's rare close-ups) and these highs and lows give the story some much needed relief, even if it all would have had more impact if it had been a bit told more succinctly.

 

The stories of Inés and Carmen, by comparison, are more muted because there are no big moments or outburst but only quiet realisations filmed in the medium shots so much favoured by television, thus keeping the characters at arm’s length. Some of the details, most notably the treatment of the is-he-or-isn’t-he boyfriend of Inés, feel wholly generic and superfluous, though the way Bollaín treats the possible romance between Carmen and Sergio is noteworthy for its delicacy. The actual cases the three women work on at the office often feel like little more than window-dressing.

 

Since the women are detectives, hidden camera footage could of course not be absent, though thankfully Bollaín keeps this to a minimum, while the way in which she uses music, camerawork and editing at the beginning and end of the film to place her characters in their surroundings is a nice touch.