A very good thriller indeed and very powerful in mixing Irena's present with her nightmarish past. Yet something was missing. Excellent actors (especially Alessandro Haber), a fully believable heroine, good plot, but a trifle too melodramatic, for instance in the hospital (or clinic) scene with the sick child. I cannot believe it is possible to find a dead body in a landfill (unless you are the police and use earth-moving equipment). A thumbs-up for the way the police is shown, calm and restrained. Yet it all just looked a bit too artificial. Irena's "teaching" Tea to fight for herself is didactic at best and somewhat sadistic - which fits in with Irena's past but is hardly going to really help Tea grow up, whereas the film wants us to believe just that and leads us to shed tears on the grown-up little angel in the last cadre. Small plot flaws, on the whole, which might have been redeemed by Tornatore's talent, but were not.
Review of The Unknown Woman
