Magallanes

Saw this at the Leiden International Film Festival 2016 (LIFF). Well-developed and balanced script to encapsulate past problems and their effect on people long after that happened, be it as a victim, or a powerless bystander, or a soldier who only obeyed orders. Not all are bothered by events in their past, however. We see one former soldier who looks back on past history filled with hatred, adrenaline, and so on, without any pity but rather has regrets that it is over. He boasts, for example, about succeeding in getting a certain man to talk. We can imagine his "tools", luckily no details are revealed, only that it took all night.

The colonel in the story, for who Magallanes acts as a chauffeur from time to time, has conveniently forgotten everything what happened, or hides his memories under a cloak of dementia (real or not, even his son is wondering).

Main protagonist Magallanes has helped a 14-year old girl to escape, after being abused 4 months by said colonel. He recognized her immediately when she entered his taxi, but that is not mutual. She struggles with her barber shop, and has to deal with late payments to the lady who borrowed her the money for the shop.

After a convoluted blackmail setup and later on an abduction, Magallanes eventually gets his hands on the ransom money, to give it to her to end her financial problems. But she won't accept it, and explains why: Magallanes forced sex on her once after her rescue, and found that no big deal given the 4 months with the colonel, but she thought otherwise.

Further details of the story are not important to draw the final conclusion that the drama is full of informative details about how everyone experienced their troubled past and how everyone remembered his/her role in that past, be it good, bad or (most people) ugly. The movie wraps all facts and related contemplations in a coherent story, there is no black and no white, only grey.