★★★
“Doing laundry can be murder.”
Wannabe actress Rosa (de Armas) is on the way home from her job as a hotel maid when she gets a message telling her she has a call-back the next day for a final audition. With her washing machine broken, she pops into the local 24-hour laundromat to get her costume all spick and span. It and the surrounding streets are completely deserted, and it’s not long before she’s being menaced by the kind of hulking, silent figure only found in horror movies like this. She’s delighted when hunky co-launderer Gabriel (Cadavid) shows up to rescue her, despite his strange tastes in music. But is he really as nice as he seems?
C’mon, folks. As mentioned, it’s a horror movie. Of course he isn’t. Where would the fun be in that? So it’s no surprise when she spots that his washing appears as much an attempt to get rid of blood-stained evidence as anything. With a dodgy mobile phone, a sister (Diakhate) in peril and a psycho banging on the door, how is Roda going to get through the night? And will she ever get her laundry finished? It’s all entirely contrived, naturally: not just the launderette, but the entire block of this residential neighborhood completely and conveniently deserted, with no-one at all passing by, or even glancing out their window to the unfolding carnage. Maybe triple-pane windows are a thing in Colombia, I don’t know.
Still, it’s an effective portrayal of the loneliness of the big city, and with that as a given, it’s a briskly energetic piece that pits Rosa against Gabriel for most of its duration. She knows she can’t possibly out-muscle him, so has to try and use her wits to survive – and also try to keep her sister, who is back in the nearby apartment, out of harm’s way. Just when that seems to have run its course, the film unleashes a triple-whammy of twists. One character returns; a new one is introduced; and we get to discover the truth about Gabriel (which explains things like his odd taste in music). These are of varying effectiveness – I liked the new character the best, and wished they had shown up earlier. Though your overall reaction may well depend on how you feel about movies which suddenly shift genres.
In this case, it does render what had gone before a bit problematic: given what we eventually discover about Gabriel, I have to wonder why he didn’t kick things off in that direction, a great deal sooner. [You can probably tell, I’m tiptoeing around spoilers] It would certainly have helped avoid a sense that the ending feels rushed: you’ve barely got your brain around what’s started to happen, when the credits roll – just as things were getting interesting. It’s perhaps this which leaves it feeling more like an unoptioned pilot of a TV show, setting the table for a series to come. Though at least it’s one I would be interested in watching.
Dir: Antonio Trashorras
Star: Ana de Armas, Diego Cadavid, Judith Diakhate, Leonor Varela
a.k.a. El Callejón