Maixabel

This film revolves around an extremely sorrowful period of the Spanish history set in the first decade of the 2000´s. It was a time fraught with huge suffering and pain caused by the indiscriminate murders of innocent people by a ruthless terrorist Basque group called ETA.

Iciar Bollain is the female director of this interesting piece of work, who tells the story of Maixabel, a courageous female victim of this mob. Maixabel makes the difficult and controversial decision to arrange a meeting with one of the responsibles for his husband's death at her request so as to tell him how she truly feels.

Iciar succeeds in conveying an honest effort to show respect towards the victims, but she also wants to show how even a horrible monster who has been brainwashed and raised in an extremely toxic environment, is capable of feeling regret and redemption.

One of the things that I liked about the film the most, apart from the solid perfomances of the cast, was the fact that most of the time it is addressed from a perspective which is strictly human and personal. The political or ideological connotations that it might have had, are deliberately overlooked or , in the best of the cases, relegated to a secondary role. In other words, in my opinion it is merely about the internal evolution of two people and their crucial meeting: The exemplary wife whose husband was cowardly killed and his tormented murderer.

All in all, this is a good story told in a generally tactful way which is worth watching despite the fact that there were a few lines of dialogue which made me feel a bit uncomfortable. Recommended.