Mataharis

A Spanish film set in Madrid. There is a private detective agency. Its work is ordinary: insurance fraud, infidelity, watching employees. Three women work there. Eva has just had a baby. She is back at work and running a house with two children. Her husband is in the same trade and looks after them in the evenings. Eva is given a job. She will follow a man who is a workers' representative at a company. The company wants him dismissed and is looking for a reason. Inés is the second detective. She has gone into a company as though she works there. Her job is gathering information. She forms a relationship with an employee. Manuel likes her and she likes him. She cannot tell him who she is. Carmen is the third. In her forties, married, with two children. She learns something about her husband. He has another family; another woman and a child. It has gone on for years. From there the film runs the three lines together. What the narrative is interested in is not spying but knowledge: its idea is that these women's trade is finding other people's secrets, and that exactly the same secrets are in their own lives. The man Eva is following turns out to be innocent. She has to write the report and the report will end his job. Inés is forced to reveal who she is. Carmen does not talk to her husband. She starts following him; she applies her trade to her own house. The narrative resolves none of the lines with a big scene. The endings are small and plausible. Icíar Bollaín keeps the film close to ordinary working life. An office, a bus, a kitchen and a school gate. The images are plain and there is little music. Najwa Nimri, María Vázquez, Nuria González, Tristán Ulloa and Diego Martín are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes Spanish social drama and woman-centred narratives. Who it is not for: anyone expecting tension; the profession carries a genre promise but the narrative stays entirely in daily life.