Yılmaz Erdoğan - actor, director, occasional poet, all-around pillar of the Turkish cinema - excels in this by-the-book cop thriller from Türkan Derya. Literal-minded viewers take warning, but the associative looseness hums on a different - and potent - frequency. Mystical, elemental wisps of the malevolent swirl around the lush getaway as the two adult women develop a fragile yet deep bond, growing close amidst a mounting feeling of unease articulated more through destabilizing formal juxtapositions and jarring transitions than dialogue. Something’s not right with the kid, and after a “transmigration” of the soul meant to cleanse any bad vibes, he only gets creepier. Amanda (María Valverde) and her daughter Nina (Guillermina Sorribes Liotta) have come to an idyllic country house for the summer, and quickly fall in with neighbor Carola (Dolores Fonzi) and her unsettling son David (Emilio Vodanovich). Peruvian standout Claudia Llosa (once an Oscar nominee for The Milk of Sorrow) doesn’t do any hand-holding in her new psychodrama, a mesmerizing mix of inscrutable symbols and signifiers so confounding that the genre label could peel right off.
Take a break from your spooky season horror marathon to check in on the latest additions to the original movie catalog: Claudia Llosa’s in fine company among the rest of the offerings, too: a Turkish cop flick with a powerhouse lead performance, a handsomely photographed salute to Dutch valor during wartime, and an anime reworking one of Netflix’s all-time most-streamed titles. Such is the case in October, as a Peruvian master resurfaces for the first time in seven years with a strange, hypnotic psychodrama in only the loosest terms. The pleasure of monitoring Netflix’s feature output month in and month out lies in the unexpected, the surprise in finding that the service has plopped a gem into the library without any fanfare. Photo: Glen Wilson/Netflix/GLEN WILSON/NETFLIX © 2021