So after a Greek director tells us about Chile coup in « missing », a Chilean actress tells us about El Salvador in « Voces », now we have a Spanish actor back to Chile, bringing along the most delicious American actress, Jennifer Connelly ! I thought it would be a stinker but i was wrong as it's an excellent politic and romance thriller and surely one of the best part for Jennifer ! Unlike a lot of her Hollywood friends, she gets an inspired hand to pick movies that have something to tell : here, it's about liberty, democracy, being dissident and making moral choices. Banderas is also deeply focused and concerned and the production is really well-done. This movie has a real emotional and educative content as it explains why human rights and liberty begin and end in the hands of individuals and not elected or tyrannic representatives.

If you don't go by the poster of the movie(which portrayed it to be a passionate love story),you'd enjoy the movie.

I haven't read the novel and I was engrossed very quickly with what was shown in the movie. The year is 1973 and Chile has been taken over by military coup. An woman talks to Francesco(a phychiatrist) about the nightmares she is having after military has tortured her and her husband. Her voice breaks as she says "one after another..again and again" Irene (Connelly) belongs to the upper class, she is innocent, engaged to her cousin, a military captain since childhood. She also publishes a magazine. She employed Francesco(Banderas) who is now out of job as the photographer. Francesco and his family are totally against the human rights violation that occurs. His brother is a priest in church who tries to prevent things.

When the magazine crew went to interview Evangelina, a magical woman, military comes and interferes. Evangelina with superhuman strength picks up military commander Ramirez and throws him away. They left. Shortly after, Evangelina is taken by military and she has disappeared.

Irene and Francesco tried to find out where Evangelina is. In the process, their lives and others take a complete turn-oil. And expectedly they fall in love.

The scenes of military regime is very well depicted. The arrogance of their police, the fear among civilians are very real and touching. Of memorable scenes are Evangelina's friend in military who is torn between his job needs and the human ways.

The subject matter of this movie couldn't be anymore serious. This movie failed because the studio advertised this as a passionate movie between Antonio and Jennifer. The poster and box cover for the movie shows them engaged, half naked in the middle of an act of love. In the first 10 minutes of the movie, we see some kind of a foreplay situation between Jennifer and her cousin / lover. Then, the climax of the movie has nothing to do with the investigation they had been on. The movie peeks when both Antonio and Jennifer make love. While the one scene has been said to be the only good part of the movie, I must agree that the studios allowed the audience to believe that this movie was going to be packed with sex, sex, nudity, and more sex. You can't sell a box of cereal with a naked woman on the cover and then have the cereal filled with little marsh mellow religious figures of Christ and Saint Peter and Paul. Much like the cereal, the movie has its moments but fails to hold an audience because everybody is waiting for the sex scene. The movie tries to get serious but we are overwhelmed by the eye candy that is Jennifer and Antonio that we can't wait for the passion to take over.