★★★½
“The long game.”
It’s surprising to me that there are currently no English-language external reviews listed for this on the IMDb. It’s certainly worthy of notice outside its native Spain, where it was nominated for thirteen Goyas, the local equivalent of the Oscars, winning Best Film and Best Actress. It takes place over a number of years around the turn of the millennium, when the Spanish state was in a notorious and bloody war against ETA, a terrorist group fighting for the independence of the Basque region. Mónica (Yuste) is a cop who is recruited by Angel (Tosar) to go deep undercover, and infiltrate ETA in order to provide information on the group, its members and their plans.
This takes a very long time, the group understandably being suspicious of outsiders and extremely cautious about in whom they put their faith. We dip into the life of “Arantxa”, the new identity of Mónica, as she becomes active in the separatist movement, laying the groundwork to be seen as reliable and, more importantly, trustworthy. It takes six years before she is finally allowed entrance and given a mission of note: providing shelter for Kepa (Gastesi), an ETA member on the run. Having gained his confidence, she is then brought in to a bigger plan, bringing leader Sergio (Anido) back into Spain, and restablishing an ETA cell in San Sebastian, to attack judges, police and other targets.
There isn’t anything particularly new here. You can probably tick off the story elements as they show up, if you’ve seen any other “undercover cop” thrillers along the same lines. It’s basically a series of narrow escapes in which Arantxa’s true identity is almost discovered. Sergio finds the phone she uses to talk to Angel, for example, or she is almost unable to return a folder after she passed it to the cops for copying. She starts to have feelings for Kepa too, while Angel faces resistance to the operation from the highers-up. Oh, and #Sexism, because it’s Spain. All fairly boilerplate stuff. However, the secret sauce is in the execution, which Echevarría does with no shortage of skill, particularly when it comes to dialling up the tension.
It is based on a true story, though to what extent it’s accurate, I can’t say. Here, not knowing the eventual outcome going in, except at the highest level (I was aware that ETA ended up disbanding) is likely a help. Because you won’t know whether or not Mónica completes her mission successfully – and, a different question, makes it out alive. I did appreciate there’s not much effort at moral grey here. Sometimes a terrorist is just a bad guy, and if you have any doubts about Sergio, his treatment of Monica’s cat will dissolve those [If they do not, we really can’t be friends!] Again, it’s not the subtlest of plotting. Yet between it and Echevarria’s skilled hand, it all undeniably gets the job done.
Dir: Arantxa Echevarría
Star: Carolina Yuste, Luis Tosar, Iñigo Gastesi, Diego Anido
a.k.a. La Infiltrada