Pinochet’s Chile in 1976 is a time where any opposition to his dictatorship meant quiet disappearance and torture or murder out of the public eye.

Carmen (Aline Küppenheim) is a well-kept middle-aged woman with a doctor husband, servants and a holiday home by the ocean. Any injustice happening is in her peripheral vision, something that is beautifully illustrated in the opening scene as she is trying to get paint just the right shade of Venetian sunset. We hear noise from the street of a woman being forcibly arrested but see only the paint can and a pink drip falling on her perfect navy shoe.

Her holiday home is being renovated but there is room for her daughter and grandchildren amidst the chaos and her husband when he can get time off work. Her smooth and oblivious journey through life gets pushed off track when the local priest Padre Sánchez (Hugo Medina) asks her to secretly care for a young man, Elías (Nicolás Sepúlveda), who has been shot. It feels like her maternal instinct kicks in as she tends his wound and secretly hustles to get antibiotics. It soon becomes clear that he is not the ‘common criminal’ that Padre Sánchez has promised he is but a rebel in opposition to Pinochet’s government.

For Carmen, it’s a slow awakening to the world around her and director Manuela Martelli overlays a soundscape that heightens the tension and builds a pervasive feeling of dread that never really goes away. There is the danger of being arrested (or worse) but perhaps even harder is the inability to trust anyone.

There’s a gorgeous 1970s feel to the cars, clothes and architectural features – that beach house was probably nothing much for its time but would be sought after now.

The finale works as resolution but also as metaphor for Chile under Pinochet for another 15 years.

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