A woman is found in a container at the Port of Barcelona. She has no memories of her life; she doesn't remember her name. A police officer named Anna Ripoll (Candela Peña) is assigned to investigate the case. Since this is a crime thriller, Anna is burdened with a gloomy backstory so that she can brood in style and add to the film's overall dreary "atmosphere." Another officer named Quique Zárate (Pol López) behaves suspiciously. He doesn't appear trustworthy from the beginning, thanks to a video recording. After the amnesic woman is attacked at the hospital, the police retrieve an ID card from the attacker and discover that her name is Alicia (Ana Rujas), and a few scenes later, it's revealed that the woman in the video who gives a statement against Quique is Alicia's sister, Lucia (Kira Miró), who once worked for him. Why did she turn against him? How did Alicia end up in a container? Is this a case of human trafficking?
In The Marked Woman (or La Desconocida), director Gabe Ibáñez takes Lara Sendim's impoverished writing and turns it into something lumbering and exhausting. For a movie that wants to be a thriller, it's devoid of edge-of-the-seat suspense. For one that wants to be a human drama, it comes with cardboard cutouts stuck with their own fixed expressions. Anna is grief-stricken and tired, Quique is stern, and Alicia looks lost and perplexed. The one-note performances are consistent with an unvarying tone that remains sober and serious. Ibáñez homogenizes everything and thinks he has an intense drama thriller at hand, though the results are obviously tedious. The movie has no interest in either diving into Anna's—or any other character's—past or personal life, nor does it have enough scenes of bonding between Anna and other people. And so when Quique hugs Anna later in the film, you are shocked by the gesture.
I am generally averse to people who use their phones during the screening of a film, but something like The Marked Woman is so dull that you are tempted to check your phone, reels, and social media messages. A hardcore cinephile considers phone-checking during a screening a sin, but movies like The Marked Woman have the power to convert anyone into a second-screen audience. Given that everybody will watch the movie at home on Netflix, it's possible that, instead of checking notifications, people will either turn the film off or fall asleep in bed. I almost dozed off in my chair.
Final Score - [1.5/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times