YOU ARE NOT ME - Mark Reviews Movies

You Are Not Me, Doppelgänger Releasing

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 5, 2024

It was supposed to be a nice holiday surprise when, at the start of You Are Not Me, the woman shows up early and unannounced at her parents' house with her wife and the couple's new baby. They whole family could spend Christmas together. Her parents could meet the woman their daughter loves and their first grandchild. It would be a reunion for the family, too, since Aitana (Roser Tapias) moved from Spain to work in Brazil and hasn't been home in years.

Things don't go as she planned or anticipated, though, in co-writers/co-directors Marisa Crespo and Moisés Romera's film, which goes from awkward, to uncomfortable, to creepy, and, finally, to horrifying with atmospheric precision. It almost doesn't matter that we can figure out something is terribly wrong in the parents' manor as soon as Aitana, her wife Gabi (Yapeona Silva), and the two's 6-month-old baby show up at the house. The course of realizing just how bad things are here still finds ways to surprise.

Beyond that, the film is genuinely unsettling in an evolving way, too. Things go wrong for the trio even before they get to the house. Their luggage is missing at the airport. The drive to the mansion is dark, and Aitana hits something with the rental car along the road. It turns out to be a pig, possibly, since an entire truckload of swine has been released. In terms of omens of misfortune, this is an odd but ultimately appropriate one.

The three aren't even greeted by Aitana's parents, Dori (Pilar Almería) and Justo (Alfred Picó), whom the daughter calls as soon as they pull up to the house for one last little deception before the big Christmas surprise. Instead, they're met at a side gate by Pepita (Pilar Martínez), who tells Aitana that her parents are home, which she already knows, but seems hesitant to let her inside. In fact, it almost seems as if this stranger is waiting for the daughter to apologize for showing up to her own family's home uninvited, excuse the intrusion, and get back in the car. Something is very, very off here.

The parents aren't much more welcoming. Dori says the usual Christmas Eve family dinner isn't happening this year, because Justo has invited other guests, including Pepita and her husband Oriol (Álvaro Báguena), as well as an unknown number of people the father knows from some business deals or something. The only person who seems genuinely happy to see Aitana again after about three years—not to mention to meet her wife and baby—is her younger brother Saúl (Jorge Motos), who has a degenerative disease that has accelerated rapidly and put him in a wheelchair.

There's one more person in the house. Her name is Nadia (Anna Kurikka), and Aitana initially believes she's Saúl's new live-in nurse, the daughter is shocked to first encounter this woman sleeping in her childhood bedroom. The shock escalates when Dori and Justo speak of and treat her as if she's part of the family—maybe even a more important one than Aitana is to them at the moment.

The story and sense of mystery here are entirely based on assumptions that seem relatively innocent, turn out to be bad for Aitana, and gradually become worse for almost everyone inside the house. The core of the rising discomfort is that Aitana already doesn't feel as if she's a part of the family. After all, the parents weren't exactly thrilled when their daughter revealed she was a lesbian. Their reaction was harsh enough that Aitana left home and the country, following an unspecified "breakdown" that Dori alludes to for her new daughter-in-law's "benefit." Gabi doesn't know any of this, because Aitana isn't comfortable talking about her family, and that only adds to the mounting conflict.

Aitana and her parents haven't really spoken since then, but with Aitana feeling comfortable with her job as a medical professional working with impoverished people in Brazil and her new family, she thinks it's time for a reconciliation with her parents. It appears the parents have no interest in that, especially since Naida is living in Aitana's room, wearing her clothes, and being gifted jewelry that was left to her by her grandmother.

With certain expectations shattered and new ones set in the first act, Crespo and Romera spend the rest of the film putting us in Aitana's mindset, as she struggles with having her worst fears about her status within her own family seemingly confirmed. As a domestic drama and psychological thriller about feeling like a stranger in one's own home and within one's own family, it's quite effective.

Tapias' performance, imbued with equal degrees of paranoia and heartbreak, accounts for much of that success. Even so, the oppressive mood of the house, the parents, and the strangers who act as if they know this family's business better than Aitana herself keep the whole thing on edge, waiting for whatever inevitable and likely devastating payoff is in store.

Once the additional guests start arriving, we realize Aitana's suspicions are correct, but what does that actually mean for her and the others in the manor? It's impressive that Crespo and Romera keep our own apprehension and sense of dread heightened, while still maintaining an inscrutable aura of mystery to what's actually happening in the background and involving us in the personal drama enough to distract from that reality.

The film's perspective is so intimate that there doesn't seem to be a game here—only the terrible, awful feelings of a woman whose parents want nothing to do with her. You Are Not Me is playing a game, though, and when that's revealed, it's somehow even more disturbing than our expectations.

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