The Boss: Anatomy of a Crime

Hermógenes comes to Buenos Aires from the provinces. He cannot read or write and is looking for work. He finds a job at a butcher's shop. The owner gives him somewhere to stay too: a partitioned space at the back. Wages are not discussed. Hermógenes works day and night, his wife joins the work, and neither of them ever leaves the shop. The owner sells part of the meat spoiled and uses his worker to hide it. Years pass. Then one night there is a killing and Hermógenes is tried. The narrative shows both the trial and everything that came before it. Sebastián Schindel directs. Joaquín Furriel plays Hermógenes and Luis Ziembrowski the owner. It is an Argentine production. The film rests on a real case; the source is the jurist Elías Neuman's book about it. The question it builds is whose the crime is; the film does not conceal the killing and shows it from the start. It sets out the exploitation of labour in detail; putting a worker into debt, taking his papers and tying his housing to the job are built step by step. The scenes in the shop are realistic and the images of butchering are not softened. Joaquín Furriel's performance is built largely in silence. Its limit is structure; the trial sections explain the narrative and lower the tension. Who it is for: viewers who like Argentine cinema and stories drawn from real cases. Who it is not for: the subject is heavy, some images uncomfortable, and the narrative offers no hope.