The Returned (Los Que Vuelven) - Final Girls Berlin Film Festival

The disturbing opening of a mother asking/praying for her stillborn son to be brought back to life, and then the awful sounds of the baby’s gurgling crying, is stark set within the beauty of the waterfalls and scenery in the Argentinian jungle setting.

Julia (María Soldi) is the wife of a farmer who with his colleagues has systematically disenfranchised the indigenous population through land appropriation and have them then working for the landowners. Julia has had many miscarriages but we see her playing hide and seek with Manuel, just as a man appears from the jungle speaking the local language, his eyeballs black marbles. Caught and tied he appears confused; the consensus is that he is possessed when he has a violent reaction to seeing Julia. The man is released to feign an escape and he is shot.

A bad dream sees Julia lose Manuel and her surrounded by men. The next morning Manuel playing hears voices from the jungle which he follows, leading to a hunt for him by Julia and her husband Mariano (Alberto Akaja). Julia finding the boy by the river then see her old maid Kerana (Lali González) on the other side.

We are taken back a year to when Kerana is working at the home, with her mother and Julia heavily pregnant. The story starts to unravel - in a good way – as the pieces of the jigsaw are laid and fitted together very neatly.

Laura Casabé’s debut is a touch sluggish at times being more concerned with issues such as the displacement of indigenous peoples for the sake of profit and agriculture as well as the dismissal of their beliefs and culture. It started by conquering imperial powers but perpetuated after by powerful landowners as we see in a discussion between the local landed gentry. Hand in hand with this is the lack of respect for local beliefs and power plus a failure to even try and understand.

This inevitably leads of death and tragedy though there is a final bleak resolution that possibly only mothers will ever understand: yearning and loss. That maternal theme underlies much of the film coming to the fore towards the end. It’s subtle and in tune with much of the other themes that are raised though not bludgeoned into the viewer.