Miguel Angel Vivas premieres a new film this week and does so in the key of a claustrophobic thriller with one of the most talented actresses of her generation: Natalia de Molina that he just as well nails a comic role in Operación Camarón than a much more intimate dramatic one like that of The Turtle Maneuver.
On this occasion, in siege, practically holds the film itself on its shoulders, being the absolute protagonist and guiding the action from beginning to end. She plays the role of Dani, a riot police officer who finds herself in the middle of a troubled eviction.
Despite the fact that he has always been clear about his principles and objectives: to enforce the law, honor his flag, protect his loved ones and bring a salary to his home, things are going to go wrong and a lot in a troubled neighborhood of Madrid, where she will be tempted, for the first time, to commit a crime when she finds a large hidden sum of money.
With the firm will to save her own skin, she will undertake a feverish escape through the labyrinths that are hidden in the building and that will lead her to discover a violent episode of corruption and a territory alien to her reality, where the authority of the police is worthless. and where it will not be well received.
She will only have the help of Nasha and her son Little, a resilient Nigerian family that will make her rethink her scale of values and realize the magnitude of the problem: the system is rotten and she, much to her regret, is part of it. he.
There are aspects of siege that work like clockwork: he wants to create tension from the first moment (the comparison with Riot Police is inevitable due to the choice of long sequence shots in an eviction) and he achieves it thanks to the formula of the camera in hand, the very close shots on the face of the protagonist and a very well-studied choral choreography.
However, it has serious difficulties in achieving some things that are essential for the film to be credible and to get the audience emotionally involved: creating empathy towards the protagonist (those endless sequences of “El ramito de violetas” and the disco don’t make it more humane) and create a crude but credible underworld of poverty.
The dedication of Natalia de Molina is to be valued very positively: as we said, it is her character who leads us to discover the most humble social substratum, just as she did from the science fiction satire El hoyo, but it gives the feeling that the inks have been loaded too much to take everything to a pathos and an exaggeration that borders on delirium.
What’s more, the introduction is even disconcerting and it is very difficult to unite the discourse linked to reality with those origins of Nasha and her son, which sink into the legendary. Having said this, it should also be emphasized that Bella Agossou is a true force of nature.
She defends her role from the inside out with commendable fierceness and, yes, she gets us as viewers to instantly take her side.
the speech of siege it is sometimes difficult to buy because the characters seem too flat and designed to direct the story in a very one-dimensional sense: there is no gray scale, only very defined villains (Francisco Reyes embroiders it again) and victims crushed by the gears of the perversity of the system.
The film lacks editing and focus: it would have been worth following the story through Nasha’s eyes and then exploring the relationship of a good person pushed to the margins of society with someone in the process of opening their eyes from within a body unauthorized by its corruptions.
