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City of Ghosts
A dying man asks his son to turn back the clock in this slow-burning Spanish thriller about the sins of the past
The City of Light becomes The City Of No Limits in this convoluted Spanish mystery-thriller set in Paris. Returning home to his family as his father lies in hospital, prodigal son Victor (Sbaraglia) uncovers a strange conspiracy: his father Max (G??mez), terminally ill with cancer and increasingly deranged, is convinced that he's being held against his will by unknown forces. At first Victor dismisses it as nothing more than senility, then he slowly uncovers a web of intrigue involving mysterious phone numbers, empty apartments and membership of the Franco-era Spanish Communist Party. As he pieces together the mystery he falls foul of his mother (Chaplin), a fearsome battle axe, who knows more about what's happening than she's willing to let on. Part political thriller, part death bed family drama, The City Of No Limits is hard to pin down. When it works, this Spanish-Argentinean co-production manages to combine the two genres well, with Victor slowly unravelling his father's secret life as an exiled Communist supporter in Paris in the 1960s while the rest of his relatives bicker and position themselves in the hope of taking over the family business. Coasting by on solid performances from Sbaraglia (a familiar face from supernatural gambling thriller Intacto) and veteran actor G??mez (All About My Mother), it succeeds best as a family melodrama in which the ghosts of the past come back to haunt the present. It's the melodrama that ultimately undercuts this ambitious film's high hopes. The manipulative games of hide-and-seek are largely redundant as the mystery revelation turns out not to be half as exciting as promised. Verdict Working best as a family melodrama rather than the thriller it occasionally pretends to be, this is more likely to frustrate than thrill. |
