Confessions

A young girl from a wealthy family disappears in Mexico City. A man comes to the house and says he wants to talk about her return. He has a condition: someone in the family must confess to a terrible act. The members begin to speak one by one. Each confession exposes another, and as the night goes on it emerges that everyone in the house is hiding something. Carlos Carrera directs. Claudia Ramírez, Luis Gnecco, Emilio Treviño, Juan Manuel Bernal and Ana Claudia Talancón are in the cast. Carrera had been known for The Crime of Father Amaro, which caused a large argument in Mexico and was nominated for the foreign language Oscar. The construction is almost entirely in one place and rests on talk; the tension comes not from events but from confessions opened in turn. The subject is not the abduction but class. The family believes its money protects it, and every confession shows how that protection was built. It has a structure that comes from the stage; the actors have to carry long speeches, and the cast does it. Its limit is predictability; after a point the pattern declares itself and the last confession falls where it is expected. Who it is for: viewers who like Latin American thrillers and psychological drama in a single location. Who it is not for: the pace is slow, little happens, and the narrative states its moral thesis openly.