“Into the Swamp”: I’m at First Things

watching a Spanish buddy-cop film that’s also about life after Franco:

Marshland, the 2014 film from Spanish director Alberto Rodríguez which is still making the festival circuits here in the States, is a haunting combination of detective tale and truth-and-reconciliation case study. The film takes place in 1980, five years after the death of Gen. Francisco Franco. It’s got a classic buddy-cop setup, with a mismatched pair of homicide investigators—but our odd couple, Juan (Javier Gutiérrez) and Pedro (Raúl Arévalo), are a charming drunken fascist and a sensitive liberal democrat. Together, they fight crime!

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