In a year in which Argentina seems to embrace fantastic cinema with the release of several genre films in their theaters during the last few months, Natalia Mena’s The Intruder, steps forth to represent the country at the Oscars and the Golden Globes.
The film tells the story of Inés (Wild Tales‘ Erica Rivas), a woman in her forties enjoying a vacation in Mexico with Leopoldo, a man she met recently (The Moneychanger‘s Daniel Hendler). He appears to be the wrong one for her, as during the flight and in the hotel, he talks and talks, sometimes saying offensive things. Things go from bad to worse, and during a fight in their room, Ines ends up locked in a bathroom while he shouts at her. Suddenly he stops and is silent for a while. When Inés opens the door, she discovers that Leopoldo is dead several floors under the balcony.
Then, a completely new story opens up, in which we learn who Inés is and what she does for a living, and why Leopoldo may have been killed by an intruder, one that does not belong to this world. The film, based on the novel of C.E. Feiling, is full of surprises, sudden turns, and amazing characters. Ines’s mom, who suddenly appears unannounced in her apartment, is played by Pedro Almodóvar’s regular Cecilia Roth, and a mysterious man who works as an organ tuner in the church where Inés sings in a choir is benefited by the natural charm of Cesar winner Nahuel Pérez Biscayart. Also in the cast is Mirta Busnelli, a veteran actress who is superb as Adela, a voice actress and medium who knows where the intruders come from and what they are looking for.
In an interview with GoldenGlobes.com, director Meta, who previously hired Demian Bichir as the lead for her first film, Death in Buenos Aires, explained that some of the ideas for The Intruder were related to the long process of dubbing the Mexican actor, who had to work tirelessly from Los Angeles to achieve a perfect Argentine accent for the film. During the many months of working with him and the sound technicians, she learned the intricacies of voice recording, something that is deeply explored in the film, as intruders use the voice to jump from one world to another. Still, the main source was the novel, even if it was very different in tone.
“The book is really scary, it belongs to the horror genre and there’s plenty of gore, but I chose to go in a different direction. Even if people feel The Intruder is disturbing, the film really asks if we should fear what we think is threatening, or if instead we should really worry about the ordinary things in our lives, what we feel is familiar and relaxing”, she said.