Oriol Paulo's films have always been about details and God's Crooked Lines, currently streaming on Netflix, is no different. Anyone who has watched Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island will find certain aspects of the first and second acts to be extremely familar. But the devil is indeed in the smaller, finer details. The protagonist Alice, played to scintillating effect by Bárbara Lennie, is textured in ways you can come to expect in Paulo's films. We're given elaborate visual perspective on how she could be a victim and also how she could be psychologically unstable. We're also told that Alice is extremely intelligent and she presents her case to medical practioners in a very articulate, believable manner.
So, in this 2h 34m slow-burn psychological thriller, turns out the truth is whatever you make it to be (which is also a line uttered by one of the characters). It's all smoke and mirrors, and supposedly intentioned that way because there's a last-minute twist (after quite a few early on) questioning all the darts that struck bullseye up until then. However, there are no two ways about how good the film comes across aurally and visually. Fernando Velázquez's score is pretty solid and Bernat Bosch's cinematography soaks in all that unsettling-yet-beautiful imagery in and around the asylum. I also noticed that the film is based on a 1979 novel by Torcuato Luca de Tena, who actually stayed in a psychiatric institution to conjure up these characters.
There's a warm equation shared between Alice and certain inmates, and Paulo captures them wonderfully. Not only does this serve as a means to forward the plot, but it also offers the protagonist's arc a better chance at closure (even when the final twist derails everything). The art direction and costume departments do a stellar job in making the whole setup work, and the only gripe that most viewers are likely to have is the somewhat stretched run-time.
So, in this 2h 34m slow-burn psychological thriller, turns out the truth is whatever you make it to be (which is also a line uttered by one of the characters). It's all smoke and mirrors, and supposedly intentioned that way because there's a last-minute twist (after quite a few early on) questioning all the darts that struck bullseye up until then. However, there are no two ways about how good the film comes across aurally and visually. Fernando Velázquez's score is pretty solid and Bernat Bosch's cinematography soaks in all that unsettling-yet-beautiful imagery in and around the asylum. I also noticed that the film is based on a 1979 novel by Torcuato Luca de Tena, who actually stayed in a psychiatric institution to conjure up these characters.
There's a warm equation shared between Alice and certain inmates, and Paulo captures them wonderfully. Not only does this serve as a means to forward the plot, but it also offers the protagonist's arc a better chance at closure (even when the final twist derails everything). The art direction and costume departments do a stellar job in making the whole setup work, and the only gripe that most viewers are likely to have is the somewhat stretched run-time.