Tiro en la cabeza

A shooting incident on 1 December 2007 in France, in which two Spanish plainclothes policeman were killed in a ‘chance’ confrontation with suspected members of the armed Basque separatist movement ETA, formed the starting point of Jaime Rosales’ latest film. The director chose to film the days preceding the killing in such a way that the viewer becomes one of a surveillance team without listening equipment. Actions remain obscure and a sequence of encounters without dialogue evokes compelling suspense. Rosales films the main suspect being watched during everyday events – he works in an office, meets relatives, has a drink with friends – but never from close by. The camera peers through the windows of houses and shops, through displays and bar doors and allows the viewer to watch, observe, wait. The static observations are thwarted by people crossing the shot and traffic that briefly gets in the way of the observation team. Rosales emphatically plays with expectations and confusion that test the observer because of the lack of easy clues. Thanks to his rigorous formal choices, he seems to want to give the cliché of terrorist master planning an unexpected twist and he demythologises the personal lives of the suspects. So don’t expect an action thriller, but much more a deconstructional experiment in which time and the sense of time play a leading role.

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