What kind of secrets is this film talking about? There is a bit of everything: murder, robbery, treason, but also others that lack the slightest relevance. In this game of dominoes the seriousness coexists with the humour and nonsense, which is not surprising to anyone who knows that it was written by Raúl Ruiz, married to this lady who has both directed the film and edited a considerable amount of her husband’s work. Her tenth film unveils how, after a decades-long exile, a former left-wing militant returns to Chile to take care of some unfinished business regarding his own conscience on the death of a comrade and socialism legend called “the people’s voice”. But his gaze collides with current Chile’s ways, infidel and far away from the old ideologies, where everyone, even his old colleagues, have changed their skin. Sarmiento’s relationship with Ruiz is not only marital, being also a relationship between this film and DIALOGOS DE EXILIADOS (1974), both movies sharing their leading character Sergio Hernández and the theme of demystifying the political heroes or, in Borgean terms: the theme of the traitor and the hero. —Bafici
