Under Therapy

Three married couples are called to a therapist's consulting room. It is to be a group session. But the psychologist does not come in; she leaves an envelope and a recorder on the table. The instruction is this: they will ask each other questions and answer them. The questions are in the envelopes and are opened in turn. At the start everyone is comfortable; they joke and take the questions lightly. Then the questions harden. One couple knows something another does not. Someone says a thing kept hidden for years. The therapist never appears and the room turns into a court. Gerardo Herrero directs. Malena Alterio, Alexandra Jiménez, Fele Martínez, Antonio Pagudo, Eva Ugarte and Juan Carlos Vellido are in the cast. It is a Spanish production. The source is Matías del Federico's play, written in Argentina and staged in many countries. Herrero said he changed the register; the stage text was more comic and the film gives more weight to the subjects it treats. It opened in Málaga on 12 March 2023 and across Spain on 17 March. The narrative takes place in one room and proceeds close to real time. Its mechanism is the envelopes; each one is a scene and the structure proceeds through them. Its limit is form; because the stage structure is kept it is narrow as cinema and the camera work limited. Another limit is the script; the explanation in the last section is strained and the characters become carriers of an argument. Who it is for: viewers who like films drawn from the stage and relationship drama. Who it is not for: it is narrow, loaded with talk, and the ending strained.