Perdida is an Argentinian-Spanish thriller film directed by Alejandro Montiel and starring Amaia Salamanca, Luisana Lopilato, Carlos Alcántara and Nicolás Furtado.
A little too familiar
Perdida follows Pipa, a policewoman who restarts the investigation behind her childhood best friend’s disappearance only to stumble across horrible secrets.
I think one of the biggest problems with Perdida is how predictable the story is. Within the first few minutes, you’d be able to discretion where the story is headed. It’s a clear-cut no-nonsense narrative that we’ve seen far too many times, however, without much character development, there’s nothing much to keep it going.
Our principal character, Pipa, has not gotten over the disappearance of her best friend Cornelia. 14 years after the disappearance, there’s a mass held in her honour, and from there the haunted policewoman tries to solve what happened to her friend. However, there’s not much character growth to her and she’s extremely flat and one-dimensional. She says and does things that you’d expect her to do and it doesn’t feel convincing enough for you to feel harrowed with her.
The same goes for the “antagonist” Sirena. She’s the one with all the threads, but we never get any explanations behind any of her actions. Also, we have a cop called Seretti who seems to be a big part of the story by the way he is portrayed but really has no role. You could probably cut his role out and it wouldn’t matter.
<spoiler> Perdida is rife with plot points that don’t go anywhere. We never know why some people do what they do, their motivations or their connections with each other. Just like similarly themed shows that we have seen far too many times, the police chief is involved in the dirty game which we get to know at the fag end, but how is he connected? It is just mentioned in passing, but before we get to know too much, he is killed.
Same goes for Ariel. When we see him with Leonora, he is alone, but he keeps talking about a “we” that we never get to quite see. Who are the Egyptians? Why did the moustache guy not kill Sirena? These and a lot of confusing plot points make this thriller quite bland and predictable. </spoiler>
Amaia Salamanca as Sirena probably got the best deal in Perdida. Even though her character too has a lot lacking, it still has somewhat of character development to make you understand and root for her. She’s a strong but fragile character, and it shines through due to Salamanca’s acting. Luisana Lopilato is decent, but her one-dimensional character really doesn’t do any favours. The other actors do a below-average job, however, and most of them look very stiff.
The production value is also not great, and the direction is somewhat choppy and confusing. There’s no clear distinction between past and present stories, and it takes a minute to understand what’s going on where. Cinematography is decent, although nothing mind-blowing.
Summing up: Perdida
Perdida’s central premise is extremely familiar, the scenes and the way the story moves forward is predictable and cliched, so much so that it’s comical. This one had the makings of a decent thriller, but with too many characters who have too little to do except make the storyline complicated, Perdida goes nowhere. It’s a kind of a one-time watch if you’re in the mood to watch something decently thrilling, but don’t expect an edge-of-your-seat rollercoaster ride. You’ll find yourself somewhat rooting for Sirena, but that’s about it.
Perdida is streaming on Netflix.
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