The title means ‘queens’ and we are immersed in a fractured family in Peru in the 70s. It’s the start of 10 years of dictatorship, at a time where inflation is doubling overnight and there is increasing unrest and violence in the streets.

The queens of the title are the two daughters, Aurora (Luana Vega) and Lucia (Abril Gjurinovic). Their mother Elena (Jimena Lindo) is a travel agent and she is almost at the end of the very difficult process of getting them passports, visas, and finding herself a job in Minnesota. It’s a way for her to remove her daughters from the escalating risk, particularly, we feel, for the people who have benefited to date, the middle class. 

The girls’ father Carlos (Gonzalo Molina) turns up unexpectedly at Aurora‘s birthday party. He is a charmer, but one of those people who is always telling you how great their life is and what they are doing and it never feels completely true. He is driving a taxi and we see him trying to impress his passenger with the fact that he is an actor and has been in four movies, none of which mean anything to the fare.  To his daughters, he is in security, or a secret agent, which explains why he has been absent for most of their lives.

The older Aurora knows he is lying but Lucia wants to believe. The problem comes with the Elena’s needs for him to sign a consent for the girls to leave the country and he is always avoiding having to meet her at the notary’s office to complete the paperwork.

At first the girls don’t want much to do with him but, forced to spend time together, and with him always referring to them as his queens,  a bond begins to grow. As the tension in the neighbourhood escalates, we can see the very real conundrum that he is faced with – does he let his daughters go even though they don’t want to be uprooted, knowing that it is their best chance for safety?

I really loved how this story immersed us in the world of these characters, letting us get to know them without ever presenting the issue as if it was black-and-white. Carlos would’ve been a nightmare to be married to and is really not the kind of dependable father you need in a crisis situation but there is something about his irrepressible optimism that is engaging. Elena seems to be the fun police but you can also understand how precarious their lives are.

There are some subtle scenes – when their maid doesn’t want to be in a photo with them, when the brother-in-law who is a politician is detained by the police when the others are set free – you feel there are significant meanings behind these actions, and you are watching the breaking up of a class system, with a hint of where the country is heading to.