IN HER PLACE – Review by Nadine Whitney
Award-winning Chilean documentarian Maite Alberdi’s debut foray into fictional filmmaking is not a grand entrance. Rather, it is a relatively muted affair that doesn’t really know if it wants to be a mystery, a feminist awakening, or a slightly quirky ‘what if?’ story. Alberdi uses the bones of an actual murder case to examine the fictional Mercedes’ feelings of being permanently stuck. She finds herself imagining herself not as Geel, but as a woman with the perceived ‘freedoms’ she has mentally ascribed to Geel before her arrest. Mercedes doesn’t know the woman, and when she meets her, Geel is pleasant but secretive.
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