She Walks in Darkness

“I was rather hoping for something along the lines of "Edge of Darkness" (1985) meets "Serpico" (1973) here, but rather than walking in darkness, civil guard agent "Amaia" (Susana Abaitua) walks in a little too much sunlight for this to be very menacing, and without that sense of peril I was a bit underwhelmed. This is all set in a Spain of the 1990s when ETA was waging it's own war against the Spanish establishment in order to achieve Basque independence. These people are a determined and well organised/disciplined group hiding in the relative safety of the South of France and so she courageously volunteers to try to infiltrate their organisation and pass back vital information that will hopefully thwart their continuing campaign of assassinations and bombings - which are often illustrated throughout using actual news reportage. Now I suppose one school of thought might well be that her very purpose - and even her survival - involved an attention to the minutiae of her day-to-day life that might, on screen, border on the pedestrian. Nobody seems to even vaguely suspect her duplicity; there are no gadgets and gizmos and there is most definitely nothing remotely glamorous about her task or that of her handler in her only marginally more safe office. There's no sense of conspiracy here at all and the snag with taking that approach is that it can leave us with something a little too pedestrian. History tells us ETA were ruthless and violent people who would certainly have thought nothing of disposing of her had they the slightest suspicion, but watching as she slowly gathers intelligence by syphoning through the dustbins with very little evidence of any risk doesn't actually make for very thrilling cinema. There's real for the sake of real and there's real for the sake of the big screen - and I think this falls between the two a little too gently, especially as she becomes more entrenched in their operation and exposed to activities that she might have been able to avert were it not to compromise her identity. That said, Abaitua presents a confident performance and the visual effects recreate something of the terror faced by many living amidst these troubles, but auteur Agustín Díaz Yanes seems a little unsure how far he wants to push the threat elements here. It's worth a watch, though, but just a little disappointing.”