(2002) Is one who pirouettes a revolutionary? This is the story of an insurrectionary movement in an unnamed Latin American country and the efforts by the antiterrorist police to locate its leader, directed by John Malkovich from a screenplay by Nicholas Shakespeare from his novel and filmed in Madrid, Spain; Portugal; and Ecuador.

Police Sgt Augustin Rejas (Javier Bardem), 31 years old, soft- and sweet-tempered, formerly a reputable lawyer, commanding a checkpoint into the capital, stops a pick-up truck with three males, a female, and a dead dog; he interviews Melquiez Duran because the man, who says he's a laborer on his way to a funeral, lacks proper documentation with a photograph.

Five years later, dead dogs are found suspended from lamp posts and elsewhere, bearing signs with slogans and a salute to an anarchist presidente Ezequiel; a child carrying a knapsack becomes a suicide bomber. On security details Lieutenant Rejas and Sgt Sucre (Juan Diego Botto) investigate the spreading incidents of terror: no spokesman, no headquarters, no discernible organization, no manifesto, just the name Ezequiel appears in a revolution yet unannounced.

His chief promotes Rejas to captain, naming him "tom cat" to go into the alleys to find this troublesome tom cat. A university professor provides Capt Rejas's team with its first break, identifying Ezequiel (Abel Folk) as a former instructor of Kantian philosophy, Edgardo Rivas, who considered himself to be the fourth flame of communism but who hasn't been seen for ten years.

There is no manifesto, explains the professor, because "text assumes its own reality"; thus to be effective as an inspirational teacher and leader, like Jesus, Ezequiel leaves behind no documentation or images. Except for one photograph Rejas took of Ezequiel/Duran at a checkpoint five years earlier.

At home Rejas is not the typical macho Latino: he's thoughtful, considerate, even does the dishes. His wife Sylvina is obsessed with her social friends (she wants a nose job) and their activities, unaware of her husband's dangerous mission. Rejas's daughter Laura takes ballet lessons from Yolanda Celandin (Laua Morante) in her studio below her private residence.

Acts of terror suddenly erupt in the capital: at a modern-dance performance members of the audience, including the Minister of the Interior and his wife, are brought on stage and executed; teenage girls in school uniforms ambush a car full of government officials. The president declares martial law: in retaliation innocent members of a legitimate theater group are murdered by the military.

An intimacy between Rejas and the ballet teacher begins: finding him to be remarkably kind and modest, she asks what he does for a living; he says: "I'm trying to find a more honest way of practicing the law."

Using clues he's gained from the capture of a videotape and his knowledge of Quecha (his mother had been part Indian), he ventures into the countryside where his father once owned a coffee farm (confiscated by a previous military regime) and the priest for whom he'd served as altar boy had been murdered by the terrorists. The name of the recently deceased Dr Edith Pusanga, a dermatologist and mistress of Ezequiel, passes discreetly into Rejas's possession.

Back in the city, digging through garbage, Rejas's team finds evidence of someone's using Dithranol (for a skin disease) in the apartment above Yolanda's rooms. "You don't know who we've got upstairs," Rejas says to her.

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Copyright © 2007 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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