The invisible guest
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The invisible guest |
| Original title | Contratiempo |
 | |
| Country of production | Spain |
| original language | Spanish |
| Publishing year | 2016 |
| length | 110 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Oriol Paulo |
| script | Oriol Paulo |
| production |
Mercedes Gamero , Adrián Guerra , Sandra Hermida , Mikel Lejarza , Eneko Lizarraga , Núria Valls |
| music | Fernando Velázquez |
| camera | Xavi Giménez |
| cut | Jaume Martí |
| occupation | |
| |
| synchronization | |
| |
The invisible guest (alternative title The Invisible Guest , original title Contratiempo , Spanish for "incident") is a Spanish thriller by Oriol Paulo .
action
The young and successful businessman Adrián, who is suspected of killing his lover Laura, is visited by star lawyer Virginia Goodman in his luxury apartment in Barcelona . His defense lawyer Félix hired her to rehearse a line of defense with Adrián that would be convincing for the jury shortly before the impending circumstantial trial, in order to save him from impending conviction. First, Adrián tells her the unconvincing story that an unknown third party must have been in the hotel room where he was picked up by the police with Laura's body and the murder weapon in his hand. The perpetrator first knocked him unconscious and then committed the murder and then poured 100,000 euros from a suitcase that Adrián was carrying with him at the scene. The couple would have brought the money with them to pay a blackmailer who knew about their relationship and who had directed them to the remote mountain hotel. Adrián cannot explain how the perpetrator escaped from the locked room and why the police could not find any traces of the alleged intruder.
Goodman makes it clear to him that he cannot convince anyone with this story and that he will certainly be found guilty. She urges him to reveal the full truth about the history to her because otherwise she cannot help him. The disappearance of a young man from the village of Bierge , Daniel Garrido, is said to play a role.
Adrián then tells her about a weekend he spent with Laura in a holiday home in the mountains while his family was convinced that he was in Paris on business. On the way back, Adrián and Laura were involved in a wildlife accident in which the young driver of an oncoming car was killed. In order not to be discovered together, Laura urged him not to call the police, but to commit a hit-and-run.
Unfortunately, however, a third vehicle passed the scene of the accident, the driver of which saw the two cars involved in the accident standing on the side of the road. In order to hide the dead lying in the opposing car, Laura and Adrián pretend that they are the opponents of the accident. After the witness drove on, Laura convinced Adrián that he should now have the car with the body disappear. They stow the lifeless body in the trunk and Adrián drives Daniel's car to a reservoir and sinks the car with the dead after it gets dark. Then he can be picked up by Laura. This has meanwhile been able to repair Adrián's car, which had not started after the accident, with the help of a local. He had towed her in his jeep to his house in Bierge and repaired the vehicle in his garage. While Laura was waiting in the house and talking to the man's wife, she had noticed that the couple were the parents of the boy who died in the accident. She rushed out with the repaired car without saying thank you. In order to remove all traces, Adrián sells his car for scrapping to a recycler and officially reports the vehicle as stolen. Then Laura and Adrián split up and agree not to see each other again.
Some time later, Adrián is picked up from his office by the police because they have linked him to Daniel's disappearance. Tomás Garrido, Daniel's father, had written down the license plate number of the car he had repaired. Adrián's lawyer Félix explains to the police that the car was stolen and that Adrián was in Paris. In order to support Adrián's alibi, Félix has to get him fake flight tickets and hotel bills that prove his alleged trip.
Adrián carelessly contacts Laura and is monitored by the police. He explains to Virginia Goodman that the reason was a blackmailer who lured her into the mountain hotel and killed Laura there. According to Adrián, it is the driver who saw her at the scene of the accident. He must have secretly followed him and observed the removal of the body. Goodman rejects this theory and makes it clear to Adrián that this version sounds too constructed and leaves too many questions unanswered to convince the judges.
She suggests a scenario in which Tomás Garrido ambushed the couple in the hotel room. Together with his wife, who was employed as a carpenter in the mountain hotel, he planned the crime as an act of revenge for Daniel's death. With the help of his wife, he was able to escape from the hotel room unnoticed after the crime. Both the process and the motive for taking revenge on Laura for her cold-heartedness could be plausibly explained with this theory.
Goodman says he should present it in court as if Laura managed the disappearance of the body on her own. In this context, she leads him to reveal the place where he dumped Daniel's body. Adrián confides in the lawyer that the young man was still alive when he sank the car in the lake. She then loses her composure for a short time. Then she makes it clear to Adrián that there is still an alternative to the version of the story she proposed. The jury could suspect that it was not Laura, but he himself who took the initiative to cover up the accident from the start. Laura may have felt guilty and revealed herself to the victim's parents. She herself then faked extortion to get Adrián to bring a suitcase with money to the hotel where Garrido's wife worked. When she asked him to leave the money to Daniel's family and to face the police with her, he freaked out and killed Laura.
The alleged lawyer can get Adrián, who now feels safe, to confirm that the last version of the story is true and that he actually killed his lover. Then she leaves the apartment and shortly afterwards the doorbell rings again. The person at the door introduces himself as Virginia Goodman. It turns out that the first visitor secretly recorded the conversation with Adrián and is actually Daniel's mother, who disguised herself as a lawyer.
production
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Directed by Oriol Paulo , who also wrote the screenplay for the film. Mario Casas took on the lead role of the murder suspect Adrián Doria. Ana Wagener plays in a double role the mother of the accident victim and the supposed star lawyer Virginia Goodman. In the German dubbing, which was carried out on behalf of Think Global Media GmbH, Adrián Doria is voiced by Florian Hoffmann , and Heike Schroetter dubbed Virginia Goodman.
The shooting started in November 2015 in the Parc Audiovisual de Terrassa, in the Catalan cities of Barcelona and Girona and in Bizkaia . The final takes place in the high valley of Núria , which can only be reached by the cog railway shown in the film.
The production costs of the film amount to around four million euros.
The film premiered on September 23, 2016 at the Fantastic Fest in Austin and was shown for the first time in Germany in January 2017 as part of the Fantasy Filmfest White Nights . The cinema release in Spain took place on January 6, 2017. On February 23, 2017 the film was released on DVD.
reception
Reviews
Alexander Hertel from the film service says that the Spanish thriller impressively proves that the subgenre of the locked room mystery is far from over, and the scenarios in the film always remained plausible, thanks not only to the great script, but also to the excellent actors sei: “Main actor Mario Casas in particular implements the various facets of his role convincingly. Through the interviews, he reveals ever deeper insights into Adrián's inner life and the complex happenings, moves into darker areas of his life than he actually wants. "
The film critic Antje Wessels writes that the basic concept of The Invisible Guest is actually much too simple to be able to construct a film from it that does not chew on the umpteenth crime cliché. The special feature, however, is that the viewer never knows which version actually corresponds to the truth. The always completely subjective narrative perspective of the characters, created by screenwriter and director Oriol Paulo, shapes the events in their own way. Sometimes the flashbacks would contradict each other more and more. This concept of alternating narrative perspectives in each scene could go wrong especially if the actors were not up to this permanent change, for example if Adrian is portrayed as the potential murderer as well as the brave innocent lamb, but Mario Casas is supposed to do this . The same applies to leading actress Bárbara Lennie and to the opaque Ana Wagener as tough attorney Virginia Goodman, who is something like “good and bad cop” rolled into one. The ensemble carries this difficult task confidently on its shoulders and remains credibly focused at all times despite the constant change of perspective, says Wessels.
Willamette Week's Walker MacMurdo says that while the film is at times predictable, it has enough twists and turns to captivate you until the whole truth is revealed.
Gross profit
With a box office result of 3.65 million euros by May 2017 and more than half a million (555,476) viewers, Contratiempo was among the top 10 most watched films of 2017 in Spain and was one of the most successful productions of the domestic cinema year. In China , where the film opened on September 15, 2017, it was seen by more than 2.3 million viewers and grossed almost 26 million US dollars .
Awards
Gaudí Awards 2017
- Nomination for Best Film Editing ( Jaume Martí )
Portland International Film Festival 2017
- Awarded the audience award Best of PIFF After Dark Sidebar ( Oriol Paulo )
- Fourth place in the audience choice Best Narrative Feature (Oriol Paulo)
Web links
- The invisible guest at the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The invisible guest in the German dubbing index
Individual evidence
- ↑ Release certificate for The Invisible Guest . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (PDF; test number: 165395 / V).
- ↑ Imma Fernández: Rodaje en el Parc Audiovisual de Terrassa: Un cadáver en la cama de Mario Casas. In: elperiodico.com, November 16, 2015. (Spanish)
- ^ Imma Fernández: Un cadáver en la cama de Mario Casas. In: elperiodico.com, November 16, 2015. (Spanish)
- ↑ The invisible guest. In: femundo.de, February 9, 2018.
- ↑ Alexander Hertel: The Invisible Guest In: Filmdienst 7/2017.
- ↑ Antje Wessels: The Invisible Guest. In: wessels-filmkritik.com, February 17, 2017.
- Jump up ↑ Walker MacMurdo: Week One of the Portland International Film Festival is Here. These are the Movies You Should Watch In: Willamette Week, February 8, 2017.
- ↑ Taquilla España: 2017. In: premiososcarlatinos.wordpress.com. Retrieved April 7, 2019 (Spanish).
- ↑ a b Contratiempo (The Invisible Guest). In: Box Office Mojo , accessed April 7, 2019.
- ↑ Box Office China 2017. In: insidekino.com , accessed on April 7, 2019.
- ↑ El pratenc Jaume Martí guanya el Gaudí al millor muntatge In: elprat.cat, January 30, 2017.
- ↑ Portland International Film Festival: Award Winners and Film Previews In: thepacificsentinel.com, March 10, 2017.