“El Castigo,” which translates from Spanish to English as “The Punishment” (2022), is a Chilean Argentinian film about a married couple, Ana (Antonia Zegers) and Mateo (Nestor Cantillana), who are trying to find their son, Lucas (Santiago Urbina), near a forest lined road. As the authorities, Sergeant Carolina Salas (Catalina Saavedra) and her partner, J. Navarro (Yair Juri), call for back up and try to locate Lucas, the pair finally confront the truth about themselves, their relationship and their son. Writer Coral Cruz and director Matias Bize create a simple devastating human portrait of the opportunity for rebirth from unraveling.
The ingredients of “El Castigo” are simple yet the execution is complex. Using real time, Bize shot the film in one continuous take in an outdoor location using five superb actors, two cars and an accessible number of props that would be available to anyone. There is nothing wrong with using special effects or editing, but it is refreshing to watch a film be so tense with nothing but dialogue and movement. This film could never be a play. The choreography between the single camera and actors is a dance that provides insight simply based on placement and composition. There is a little shaky cam to reflect the emotions of the actor(s) within the frame, but it is used so judiciously that Dramamine is not required to enjoy it. When the film follows behind a character, Bize is scrutinizing the character by also focusing on the surrounding environment and what the person is seeing, which depicts the relationship of the character with the setting and others. When the camera is facing a person, Bize is empathizing with the character. When the camera is to the side and the frame incudes two people, the relationship dynamic is the subject of the focus.
When “El Castigo” begins, the precipitating event already transpired off screen so the camera studying the initially still and inscrutable Ana and the more reactive Mateo is the only clue to extrapolate what happened. It has an understated feel that could easily give way to true crime or sensationalism but stays rooted in the drama of three-dimensional people who could have easily been written as archetypes hitting one note hysterics. No cheap melodrama here. It is a domestic drama with the urgency of a thriller.
Though never physically alone, Ana is a solitary figure who must remain stalwart to withstand the turbulence around her. The forest evokes the untamed wilderness which is inherently dangerous to these city folk from Santiago, but also could be like the Garden of Eden right after the exile full of shame and recriminations. Ana’s interactions with Mateo and on the phone with her mother reveal that she feels the need to protect herself from blame for the situation. While feeling as if she is under the microscope of everyone’s judgment, she is also unseen as an individual. During her phone calls, Bize only lets viewers hear Ana’s side of the conversation. Her dietary needs are dismissed while Lucas’ pleasure is indulged. Ana keeps a calm tone even as she sardonically notices each slight, but as “El Castigo” unfolds, she shows more emotion like a dam crumbling.
Mateo denies Ana’s assessment of the situation then behaves exactly as she predicted. He clearly adores his son and cannot bear the thought of losing him, which makes it impossible for him not to blame Ana. He lets her take the lead as the disciplinarian instead of disagreeing in the moment, but uses her leadership as insulation from taking responsibility. Ana seemed to marry someone like her mother, a person who lacks the capacity to love and look at a situation under the harshest light. When they describe their son to the authorities, he repeatedly rejects anything that could be perceived as negative, including a psychological diagnosis. He prefers to project his flaws on to others and rationalizes away a lot but is clear about one thing: his son is in danger, and this event is life changing whereas Ana is still in denial and the negotiating stage.
Don’t worry. Cruz is not putting us in “We Need to Talk About Kevin” (2011) territory, but in these brief interactions, it is obvious that Mateo’s refusal to accept his son’s attention deficit disorder (ADD) is preventing Ana from getting the resources needed to help their son, raise him effectively and improve their relationship. It is also interesting that when he meets the authorities, he shakes Navarro’s hand first. After Lucas, Navarro has the least amount of screentime. Sgt Salas is clearly Navarro’s superior. Perspicacious and straightlaced, Salas studies her environment and the couple without betraying any of her inner thoughts or revealing much about herself. In contrast to the parents, her professional partnership functions wordlessly and harmoniously, which leaves her enough energy and time to wrangle the parents from inadvertently hampering the search and elicit more information from them. When the parents finally confess the inciting incident, her reaction is objective, not judgmental, and after all the buildup in the first half of “El Castigo,” her response is the barometer that viewers will most use to determine how serious the situation is almost as if she is a judicial figure. Once there are no secrets, Lucas’ disappearance takes a backseat to examine the couple’s original sin, which predates Lucas’ conception. [It should go without saying, but do not conflate not being judgmental with cosigning an abusive, objectively wrong action. A movie is not real.]
The ensuing performance between Zegers and Cantillana is so nuanced and textured that no one should leave thinking that anyone is a villain. Cruz really could have screwed up the dialogue and made it sound either as one-sided as a TikTok or academic as a gender studies class. Instead, she creates characters with relatable, specific back stories without too much prose dumping. These details make them feel more like an every couple whom the audience could easily trade places with under the wrong circumstances. Raising kids is hard, and no individual can escape the burden of emotional labor, the gravity of gender norms, and the sacrifice of self for the family. Near the denouement, despite loving each other, the unspoken question is not whether they will find Lucas, but whether their marriage will survive. They manage to share one tender moment before returning to the situation at hand until Ana is ready to confront her inner life and contrast it to youthful expectations, which then leads to a difficult conversation that the duo should have had much earlier.
If “El Castigo” delivers a lesson, it is to choose the self over everything else regardless of what you want because an egg cannot be unscrambled. While ambiguous, the ending is still satisfying because all the emotional baggage gets dropped, and Lucas’ fate is revealed. It is a cathartic albeit bleak end, but it will be interesting to see how moviegoers react. If they feel the need to take sides, they may walk away with the wrong lessons, but if they can handle sitting with some unpleasant truths, they will adore this film. While the film is imperfect for attributing adult motives and maliciousness on a child, a Boomer habit that can lead to parentification then no contact upon reaching official adulthood, it is refreshing to have a film that is a technical marvel without being a one note gimmick or losing the innate humanity of the characters and situation. It is worth reading subtitles.
