Killing Words

Killing Words: Answers, Answers, Answers
Laura Mana
Spanish with subtitles 2003 DVD



Finally a film that says it all, a film that embraces women as intelligent, strong, brave emotionally connected. This film answers the questions I posed in my review of Living and the Dead

From the moment the film opens and we see her, Laura, strapped into a chair and hear Ramon, her ex-husband, speak, utter before a video camera his confession to crimes that come up to the number 18 murders, the nineteenth, will be hers as nineteen is the day of their anniversary, we know we are at the mercy of a master film maker who understands film, both the good and the bad.


Laura is portrayed as smarter than Ramon, smarter than the detectives who are set on finding him out and smarter than you and me, the film audience. As Ramon and Laura (Ramon is a professor and Laura a psychiatrist) go back and forth into reality and fantasy and playing games of one sort and another the director, Laura Mana shows that she knows films, She knows what is expected and that is exactly what she is not going to do.

This is a film like none other although it has all the trapping of yet another serial killer film replete with all the gorey details, the blood and horror thoughts of what Ramon did and to whom he did what to.
But this film twists and turns and you can't help but sit through it feeling like you too are a captive audience, you don't know what to think, or what will happen next., And the ending is positively brilliant.
Killing Words will make any evening entertaining and any afternoon a delight. i recommend it highly. My only regret is that in translation the word game they play is not coherent, not the way it would be if it were done in English. But a game is a game and a film is a film and this film is a must see.


Linda Z