The film follows the story of a group of people in exile in La Boca, Chile, where four mutilated priests and a nun (Antonia Zegers) are receiving further charges. These people are suspected of crimes ranging from abuse of children to the abduction of children from mothers, but they are visiting a written consultant (Marcelo Alonso) who turns things upside down.
Larrain consciously took on the difficult, complicated themes of faith, truth and guilt here, a commendable task considering that avoiding the topic has been part of why it has escaped confrontation for so long.
If Larraín's intention was to both slam the church and give his audience a hint of how repulsed, traumatized, and likely complicit its victims felt, he hit it out of the park.
In this zero-sum drama, despair is catching. But so is the fascination of watching a gifted filmmaker dissect the emotions and motivations of the sinned and sinned-against.
Larrain makes all of his damaged characters somewhat likable and sympathetic (although the likability dims toward the end). Which only makes this meditation on mercy, forgiveness and twisted raw power more disturbing.
