Contratiempo [The Invisible Guest] (2016)

(Netflix Streaming, September 2020) With thrillers, there’s always a danger in over-complicating things. Contratiempo squarely falls into that trap with a premise so convoluted that it only takes a second place to an even more delirious finale. Ironically, one of the ways to improve the experience of watching such movies is to spoil yourself rotten beforehand, so that the far-fetched developments don’t feel so implausible, and you can watch the craft through which the film puts its pieces together. I was generally aware that Contratiempo was a twisty thriller, and that did help—Suspiciously questioning everything in sight, I had anticipated nearly three-quarter of the finale, even though some other things had escaped me. The premise has to do with a couple having an affair causing the death of a young man. A few deceptive manoeuvres later, the woman coincidentally finds herself at the young man’s parents’ house, while the man is dumping a car in a lake. But the framing device, months later, has the man building a defence strategy with a high-powered lawyer who insists on knowing everything… and I’ve already told you enough to get you guessing accurately at elements of the conclusion. Despite Contratiempo’s very sober direction and cold cinematography, this is a wild script that throws in a locked-room mystery, impersonations, twisted relationships with a universe populated by only twenty people, and some subtext about rich people getting away with murder. The Spanish setting can be good for a change of pace from American productions, even though much of the story could be relocated anywhere else with little change. I hesitate to call Contratiempo a good movie—it’s slickly directed by Oriol Paulo with good acting and technical qualities and it will keep you entertained if you engage in narrative combat with the plot, but the script is perilously getting us closer to pure nonsense where anything and everything can happen regardless of whether it makes sense or has ever happened in the history of humanity.