Marshlands review: death in a post-dictatorship

What was that about synchronicity? When Alberto Rodríguez was shooting his complex, impressively moody Spanish detective thriller, he can’t have imagined that virtually every review would end up comparing the finished piece to an American series in simultaneous production.

The similarities between Marshlands and the first series of True Detective are really quite spooky. Juan (Javier Gutiérrez) and Pedro (Raúl Arévalo), two mismatched cops, are sent to investigate the disappearance of two young women in a rural part of the country.

When not bickering their way towards a reluctant understanding, the partners unravel a conspiracy that seems to implicate the great and not so good of the parish.

The two projects really mesh at a stylistic level. Like Cary Fukunaga in the US series, Rodríguez favours aerial shots and long sequences that allow the leads to chew over the evidence while driving beside silted rivers.

Had we not been offered True Detective for comparison, we might have imagined Marshland as a variation on post-classical Hollywood of the early 1970s. Juan is a Gene Hackman type. Pressed down by grim secrets, apparently gravely ill, he requires no encouragement to lay his hands violently on any hostile witness of any age (or gender). Pedro, relatively civilised, comparatively liberal, is closer to the Al Pacino of Serpico.

Shot in shades that suggest forgotten Polaroids, the film does a very good job of rationing its twists and concealing its feints. Pedro unearths a puzzling snippet of film and gets a dodgy journalist to help him source it. A brick of heroin turns up in an unexpected place. What is the significance of a pamphlet offering job opportunities in the sun?

It's all good, tense stuff. But what really sets Marshlands apart (from True Detective, among other things) is its involvement with a slippery point in Spanish history. It is 1980 and Spain is still getting used to democracy. The old brutality is still simmering, and Rodríguez's film argues that it never entirely went away.

Highly recommended.