Some call Valentín Javier Diment’s El Apego or The Attachment Diaries an erotic thriller but, perhaps it’s not. It feels more of an Almodovar copy that can somehow fit into someone’s idea of counterprogramming for this year’s spooky season. The film starts in black and white, where an Argentine, Carla (Jimena Anganuzzi), consults a doctor. That doctor Irina (Lola Berthet), specializing in abortions. Carla wants an abortion, but Irina suggests that she keeps the baby and lives with her on a temporary basis. During that time, they shop for families who will adopt the baby instead, but things, obviously, go wrong. One of the prospective fathers rapes her, making the doctor kill both the rapist and his wife on sight. That murder somehow gets them closer to each other, they do it again, so much so that it raises eyebrows.
Thrillers are a genre of high emotion and volatile dynamics and this film brings that in spurts and waves. It attempts to bring all of those through Carla and Irina’s increasing, well, attachment, their friendship turning towards love. Because love makes bodies pile up, even a man close to them, Ortiz (Germán de Silva), starts to turn. The Attachment Diaries, perhaps, shows what happens when a friendship makes people shift their priorities and ignore other dangers. There is, bafflingly, a lot of downtime between murders, scenes where, understandably, Carla and Irina reveal their back stories. The cinematography during these first two acts complement those stories albeit reinforcing stereotypes about women’s choices during the past. And as Carla and Irina consummate their relationship, the film turns from black to white to colour, pastel colours.
Pastel colours feel generous of a term for The Attachment Diaries, a film that oscillates wildly between hot and cold. The third act shows the metastasis of those problems that the first two hint at, plotwise and visually. This act gives less screen time to Carla and Irina and more to Ortiz snooping around Irina’s house. Carla and Irina’s scenes are fine, borrowing from giallo if giallo uses sickly greens to offset the occasional blood. However, at other times, the colour scenes have a glare to them that clashes too much against arty gloss. I think the film is trying, with the colour scenes, to shift the perception of the film’s time period. I understand the film’s attempts and how they do it, but all that does is make the film seem unmoored.
Watch The Attachment Diaries on OVID.
- Rated: NR
- Genre: Drama, Horror, Mystery, Thriller
- Directed by: Valentín Javier Diment
- Starring: Germán de Silva, Jimena Anganuzzi, Lola Berthet
- Written by: Valentín Javier Diment