Durante la tormenta / Mirage (dir. Oriol Paulo, 2019) – Two storms connect a woman’s murder and a child’s vanishing, 25 years apart.
Verdict
Director Oriol Paulo has produced yet another compelling genre film that delivers in suspense and heart, despite predictable turns.
Review
25 years ago, young Nico (Julio Bohigas-Couto) was killed in a car accident after he witnessed a murder during a storm. Another storm in the preesent day sees Vera (Adriana Ugarte) find a way to reach Nico before his death. She prevents his accident with a warning, only to be swept up in the butterfly effect of the altered events.
Something a small as the flutter of a butterfly’s wing can cause a typhoon halfway around the world, or so claims the Chaos Theory. It rings true for Vera. Her perfect life falls apart when she learns that her child Gloria was never born and that she is no longer who she believed herself to be.
Not even her husband David Ortiz (Álvaro Morte) recognises her, and he appears to be married to someone else. An intriguing premise sets off her tense search for answers.
She has but 72 hours before the storm comes to an end, which will be her last chance to get her old life back. She looks to the police for help. But convincing Inspector Leyra (Chino Darín) may prove harder than she believed, now that she is starting to doubt her own reality.
Time travel narratives are aplenty. Oriol Paulo makes his particularly engaging by finding the heart of the story, as he did with his previous work Contratiempo (‘The Invisible Guest‘). Taking his time to home in on the characters, he acquaints the audience with Vera’s family, such that it was easy to empathise with her loss.
Central cast performances cannot be ignored. Adriana Ugarte as Vera evokes the utmost sympathy in her desperate strive to get her daughter back, every display of emotional torment a stab in the chest. Chino Darín too follows up his strong filmography with a quietly powerful performance, and truly shines in the third act.
A genre fan may be able to see what is coming, but there is nothing quite like the experience of watching the mystery unfold. It is with smaller international films like this that we have Netflix to thank for their wider distribution. For such an elegantly crafted sci-fi gem, it will be a shame to let Mirage slip under the radar.
A film can be good despite conforming to a genre and thus being a little predictable. The key is to make it compelling to watch.
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I agree. Solid performances and storytelling can make the most predictable narrative engaging, such was the case for Mirage.
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I agree with a lot of what you say but felt like the twists (particularly the identity of who the boy grew up to be) to be poorly crafted. But you´re right, these movies need to be seen and reviewed, thanks!
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I see what you mean, but personally give the twist a pass. It was unavoidably foreseeable, given the small cast. Here’s hoping more people see this film anyhow. I do think Oriol Paulo is a massively talented storyteller!
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I agree about Paulo. FYI Netflix just greenlit a series he´ll be writing/directing and which is based on a Harlan Coben novel. Seems like a good pairing of director and source material.
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Ah, that’s fantastic news! Thanks for the heads up, can’t wait to see it.
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