Mark Reviews Movies: ROJO

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 25, 2019

Everything is an open but unspoken secret in Rojo. Writer/director Benjamin Naishtat's film begins with a premise that seems as if it could become a thriller, in which an ordinary man tries to cover up his involvement in the death of a stranger, with whom he had a very public confrontation. Leaving the still-breathing man to die in the desert, this man seems in a perfect position to be gradually racked with guilt and put under immense pressure when people start to ask questions.

That doesn't happen, though. There's something undeniable sinister about this obvious subversion of our expectations.

Naishtat's screenplay immediately picks up three months after the incident, and Claudio (Darío Grandinetti), a lawyer, is going on with his life as if nothing has happened—as if he didn't push an unstable man to his limit, didn't watch the stranger shoot himself, and didn't drive him to the desert, instead getting help, as he told his wife Susana (Andrea Frigerio) he was going to. The wife never mentions any of this. Neither does anyone who was in the restaurant where Claudio viciously insulted the stranger or who heard two gunshots that same night.

Eventually, there's something of an investigation into the stranger's disappearance, but for the most part, the film is about how life just keeps moving on, despite the stranger's death and the unconnected but equally undiscussed disappearance of a family in Claudio's affluent neighborhood. For some context, the story begins in 1975. Within a year, a military coup will take over the country's government.

The political side of the story plays out in the background, through the tone of news reports, the realization why that house near Claudio's is empty (as well as the possibility that the "official" story might not be entirely honest), and the appearance of Sinclair (Alfredo Castro), a famous Chilean detective who seems like a threat to Claudio's freedom—until he starts talking politics. Nobody else talks about the political climate, because life at least on a superficial level, is pretty good for them.

Here, then, is a film that begins by enticing us with the suspense of a thriller but gradually makes us appalled by the characters' complacency with and for corruption. It's everywhere in Rojo, and nobody wants to say or do anything about it—not because they can't but because they'd prefer not to.

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