Stark Beauty

Rating: 9/10 (12 November 2018)

There is a stark beauty to this film - as with other Villanueva films (Prisoner, Enemy, Sicario), the mundane and the curious alike are framed like realist paintings. It's quietly mathematical in its story-building, reaching a solution to its equation that is, well, both the only answer that makes sense as well as the most incomprehensible. The performances by both lead women are a revelation. This movie is now 8, going on 9, years old - but like a Hitchcock, fails to age because of its mastery in showing and telling.