Rating: C+
Dir: Marcel Rodriguez and Enrique Urbizu
Star: Nerea Inchausti, Goya Toledo, Eduard Farelo, Josep Maria Pou
a.k.a. Adivina quién soy
There’s a grand concept here. Estrella (Inchausti) is a lonely little girl, who has no real friends. I’m using “real” there in both senses of the word. For she does have imaginary friends. Nothing particularly abnormal about that. Except, Estrella’s friends are a product of her deep and abiding interest in all things horror. She reads horror novels, and when her single mother Angela (Toledo) is at her job as a nurse, Estrella sneaks in viewings of the films she’s not supposed to watch. Consequently, her imaginary friends are a vampire (Farelo), and someone who is as close to Leatherface as you can get, without receiving a stern letter from Tobe Hooper.
This alone seems like it would be plenty to fuel things. There are wonderful moments: after she has an argument with her mother, Estrella runs off to her room where Leatherface comforts her (above). They seem like a manifestation of her inner torment, stemming from issues like the absence of her father – a situation which Angela refuses to discuss in detail with her daughter. Key word: “seem”. Because then the vampire shows up at the apartment, and clearly has a real existence, both being visible to Angela, and knowing significantly more about the paternal situation than Estrella. Complicating – or possibly, confusing – matters further, is a mature man who might be… a monster hunter of some kind? Or perhaps just a character in one of Estrella’s movies.
I found a lot to admire in the approach here. The city in which they live is almost eerily deserted, save for the characters directly in the movie. Almost the only background figure is a clown – which, given Estrella’s affinity for Stephen King, is likely an It reference, and another product of her imagination. However, I found the film struggles to differentiate between these constructs and reality. There are also problems with some threads in the story, which are either discarded with an almost facile ease, or never suitably resolved. After a thoroughly engaging first half, the problems thereafter became increasingly hard for me to ignore. I was left unsatisfied, and given the strong beginning, that felt a particular pity.
The Spanish title translates as “Guess who I am”, and that may be a little more accurate in its ambiguity. The “I” in that title could apply to a number of characters – in particular the vampire. Though perhaps also Estrella, who certainly has depths which she keeps hidden from her classmates, and even her mother. There is also a constant stream of news reports on the media, describing violent crimes. It feels like these are going to be important in some way, yet they apparently remain no more than window-dressing. It’s another way in which here are a lot of very good pieces here, yet the overall movie can’t tie them together, and consequently ends up as less than the sum of these parts. That’s both slightly frustrating, and a genuine shame.