Luis Vega (Pablo Echarri) is a writer who hasn’t written a book in years. His personal life is in no better shape either: his wife (Mónica Antonópulos) seems to have lost interest in him, and he’s not doing much to make her feel special. In order to overcome his writer’s block, Luis decides he’s going to write a murder story based on real life events. That’s where the meaty stuff is, he says.
Enter Laura Grotzky (Leticia Brédice), the wife of the murdered man, a hot looking blonde and mysterious femme fatale. He meets her to get some information about the murder, and she puts the moves on him right away. He pretends he’s not smitten. As their conversations develop, many disorienting facts about the murder surface. Can her word be trusted? Or is it the other way around: can he be trusted?
The novel is published and almost immediately he becomes a suspect. The police start interrogating him because of the many coincidences between the murder story he wrote and the true crime. His book, which soon becomes a best seller, features some incidents the police never disclosed to the press. For reasons not to be revealed here, even his wife seems to be involved in dishonourable stuff. Of all things, what could happen next?
Not that it matters that much, for Arrebato, the new film by Argentine filmmaker Sandra Gugliotta, is both a formulaic and uninspired thriller that offers almost no surprises at all. Half an hour into the film, you can already tell who the killer is. For starters, there aren’t that many options, and then it becomes all the more obvious because of how hard the film tries to confuse you with silly clichés.
So you may think that perhaps it’s not about who did it, but why it was done and what’s to come of it. By the time you find out the truth (which is quite soon), nothing really changes. Because for a gripping drama, Arrebato lacks the bare essentials: characters with complex personalities, a somewhat original script, an insightful point of view, good performances, an unsettling atmosphere, and a sense of real pathos.
Consider that suspenseful thrillers are hard to pull off for so many elements have to be nearly perfectly aligned to guarantee the necessary suspension of disbelief. Arrebato has such an over-trod premise that it starts on the wrong foot to begin with. From then on, it all goes downhill. I guess you could see it coming from the very beginning.
