The accompanying production notes proudly tout this as the Spanish version of True Detective. A police drama in which a young-yet-weary optimist and his old-and-weary realist partner are sent to investigate the disappearance of young girls in a remote Spanish town, Marshland will certainly feel familiar in terms of plotting, and indeed tone, to fans of the revered HBO show.
In the early 1980’s Juan (Javier Gutiérrez) and Pedro (Raúl Arévalo) arrive in a remote backwater town enjoying their annual festival, and with long memories of the relatively recent Franco regime. The old ways cast a shadow over much of what goes on here in the swampy Spanish countryside dividing opinion amongst the community and indeed the partners themselves, whose job it is to investigate a missing persons report.
Languid, dreamy and positively drenched in a miasma of perspiration, Marshland wanders along at an intriguing walking pace. Alberto Rodriguez is content to allow his camera to linger on the humid environs of Southern Spain, punctuating this film with lingering vistas and sweeping helicopter shots of the immense quagmires that run through the countryside. The standoffish locals, brooding and full of passive-aggression provide the story with an undercurrent of unease and owe as much to The Wicker Man as True Detective.
Perhaps the film’s final movement, doesn’t quite provide the kind of curve-ball that you might expect the narrative to be holding up its sleeve, with the drama unfolding in something of a familiar, linear fashion.
But the presence of the unkempt, unkind Spanish rural setting is arguably the star of the show, a life-force of its own with a menacing charisma that threatens to overpower the cop duo and suck them into hell of sweat and booze. Rodriguez exploits his setting to the full with a late car chase, delivered at relatively low speed and viewed almost entirely from within the car, in utterly terrifying fashion.
Stimulating and with a palpable undercurrent of threat, Marshland is a superior thriller loaded with ambiguity and tinged with political bite.
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