Rent Rojo (2018)

Thrillingly dark movie! - Rojo review by TE

A quietly brilliant film about the use of "disappearance" by the Argentinian military and rightwing militias.

Director Benjamin Naishtat manages to convey the horrors of this period with hardly a gunshot and hardly a glimpse of a military uniform. People disappear, the sun disappears and there is a tangible sense of sinister encroachment on normal life.

The links with events in Chile at the same time are made via the presence of a reptilian private detective from Santiago.

Most of all the film peels back the layers of 'acceptable' society to reveal the collusion and the corruption that will haunt the protagonists forever afterwards.

There is nothing spare or unattached to meaning in this film, every image is weighted with dark significance.

A dark, allegorical thriller from Argentina - Rojo review by Philip in Paradiso

This is a good film, full of symbolic meaning about individuals and families 'disappearing' in Argentina, in the mid-1970s, right before the military coup that took place in 1976. The conformist, well-to-do, bourgeois classes of provincial Argentina are keeping quiet, while all of this is taking place, and getting implicated rather more than they would like -- willingly or not. There is a leaden atmosphere of fear and foreboding in the movie.

The film is well shot and does have the feel of the 1970s about it. The acting is good throughout, and highly convincing. The plot itself is quite simple, in fact, and rather linear. In conclusion, I found it is a good film, but it is also slow, and even very slow in places. This contributes towards creating this somewhat sticky, claustrophobic atmosphere that dominates the film. So, it is a good film, but perhaps not quite as remarkable as many critics have claimed.