.jpeg)
The Invisible Guest (Contratiempo, Setback; Spanish, 2016)
Co-written & Directed: Oriol Paulo
If you are bored of the same murder mysteries Hollywood and Bollywood keep churning out, which try to lure viewers not through creative storytelling but with visual candy like mattress polo and scintillating pyrotechnics, this one is for you.
This whodunnit keeps viewers guessing until the end.
One of my many indulgences includes putting people in hypothetical tight spots and hearing their response. At a gathering of old classmates, I brought up this situation to a senior lawyer. If the client he was defending, at the outset or in the due course of the trial, admits to carrying out a serious crime, say, murder, would he still be defending him? After much circumventing and circumlocution, my friends and I managed to pin him down. For old times' sake, he volunteered an answer. Every man deserves adequate and fair representation. He would defend.
Another lawyer friend, who is in his twilight years and had found spirituality (not the liquid kind) lately, point-blankly said that he would recluse himself. He did not want anything to do with getting a guilty person off scot-free. The third and final subject, an octogenarian, was quite clear in his mind. He would check the client's bank balance first.
Hence, if a criminal gets the right representation who can spin such a yarn, he can literally get away with murder. This movie is about how one spins a story, and the other shoots it down, pokes holes in it, or patches the holes they find. As a friend mentioned recently, 'In a Court of Justice, both parties know the truth; it is the Judge who is on trial'. It is not an exercise in revealing the truth, but a dice game that takes the judge or jury for a spin.
A businessman is out on bail after being accused of killing his mistress. They had been found in a hotel room; he was holding the murder weapon, a vase with blood stains, and she was cold dead with a head injury. The room is locked from inside.
The businessman's high-flying lawyer, who had helped him avoid legal wrangles and destroy evidence to keep his reputation squeaky clean, asks him to give an honest interview to a lawyer he would be sending. She is a fixer and could find a way to squash the evidence a new witness the police picked up might provide. The businessman obliged. They met in a hotel room.
After initially giving the runaround, the accused realised that the fixer was good. She knew much more intimate information that only he and his mistress knew. He opened up.
The story goes back to when this married, two-timing businessman escaped to a remote rendezvous with his mistress. On their return, he crashes into an oncoming car. The driver succumbed to the crash.
To avoid the police and keep his secret, the businessman disposes of the car and its driver in a lake. However, his own car stalled on the road. The mistress stayed in the car to be rescued by a Good Samaritan. Lo and behold, the deceased turned out to be the Good Samaritan's son. Somehow, the businessman's lawyer made some evidence disappear, and finally the businessman was not implicated in the case. The body and the car were never found. Only the businessman knew where the car was.
With no one knowing who the new witness was or what new information he would bring to the table, the fixer and client had to prepare a solid alibi to keep the case airtight. So, the story yo-yos, as both try to concoct a credible tale. Murder mystery fans are up for a satisfying twist at the end.
This movie must be compulsory viewing for lawyers keen to practise criminal law or budding sleuths who want to know how criminals think. For the average Joe, he may find ways to bend the truth. Anyway, a lie is not a lie until it is exposed.
A good one. 8.5/10.
Farouk Gulsara (asokansham@gmail.com) is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
The User Content (as defined on Newswav Terms of Use) above including the views expressed and media (pictures, videos, citations etc) were submitted & posted by the author. Newswav is solely an aggregation platform that hosts the User Content. If you have any questions about the content, copyright or other issues of the work, please contact creator@newswav.com.
