100% of critics LOVE this film and say it’s a must see film.
Paulina, the daughter of an eminent left-wing judge, suspends her legal education and the prospects of a promising political career to travel to an indigenous community of extreme poverty on Argentina’s border with Paraguay and Brazil. She is determined to nurture ‘from the inside’ a project of civil rights education, but her Guarani-speaking high-school students resist her civics lessons – and she quickly learns that gaining their trust won’t be an easy task.These subtly illuminating encounters reverberate in the aftermath of the central event of the film – a harrowing sexual assault by a group of young men. Paulina’s unfathomable actions, and the limits of social justice, are examined unflinchingly in this ‘social thriller’ of will and sacrifice.
Worth seeing, even if its basic plot repeatedly stalls. It is a thoughtful movie, but not necessarily a fulfilling one.
As stinging as a slap in the face, “Paulina” feels as if it’s waking you from a stupor, then shaking you, demanding that you ask yourself some impossible questions about idealism and justice.
A fierce performance from Dolores Fonzi, as a heroine whose actions baffle those around her, helps to hold this conversation-starter together, but viewers’ own mileage and perceptions will vary — which is clearly by design.
Driven by a powerfully internalized performance from Dolores Fonzi as the title character, Paulina eschews straightforward answers in favor of questioning observation.
It’s unsettling and disconcerting in its complex examination of the gray area that lies between the morals we conceptually hold and the actions we’re willing to perform to affirm those beliefs in the world.
Fonzi’s performance is perfectly judged; she knows when to hold back, convincing us of her character’s sanity, and yet we never lose sight of her strength, of her power.
Thriller/Suspense Film and Writing Festival 