![]() Various possible scenarios are presented skillfully - some real, some lies and some imagined. Every time it does not, she probes him a little more, insisting all the while on the importance of detail, which of course keeps the viewer watching carefully too. At the house, Laura realizes something that will color everything that comes later, while the storytelling shifts up a technical gear, recounting events that took place simultaneously and playing interesting games with point of view.Įvents make regular returns to the hotel room where Goodman, whose job is to be suspicious, is testing Adrian to make sure his story will hold up. The backroads accident kills a young driver, and Laura panics: They agree that Adrian will get rid of the body while Laura will wait for help, which comes in the form of local man, middle-aged Tomas Garrido (Jose Coronado, who played the lead in The Body), who tows her car back to his family home. Because a last-minute witness is threatening to show up at the soon-to-start trial with damning new evidence, they have three hours, as Goodman’s stopwatch literally clicks away, to come up with a defense - the Spanish title, meaning setback, translates literally as “against time.” And Goodman actually doesn’t believe a word of Doria’s blackmail story.Īn alternative version by Doria slowly emerges. To help him out, Doria hires the silver-gray haired, renowned witness preparation expert Virginia Goodman (Ana Wagener, a fine actress whose moment finally has come) and their face-to-faces as they circle the truth are among the film’s most memorable. This very contemporary film has its roots in such classic fare as The Murders in the Rue Morgue, Agatha Christie, and John Dickson Carr’s locked-room mystery masterpiece, The Hollow Man. Following an apparent blackmail attempt - there’s a lot about Guest that is “apparent” or “seeming” - successful businessman Adrian Doria (Mario Casas, an actor who could have made a successful living as a pretty-boy hunk, but who prefers to take roles - with varying success - which will challenge him as an actor) is found in a locked hotel room with the dead body of his lover, fashion photographer Laura Vidal (Barbara Lennie, doing a modern-day femme fatale to follow her winsome turn in Nelly Regueras‘ Maria (And the Others)).
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