Cautiva

This is an Argentinean film about a 15-year-old girl, Christina who goes in for a routine blood test and the doctors find something they don’t go public with right away. She has a pretty frank discussion with her mother about having kids and her mother is pretty weirded out by the questioning – you might think because of the girl’s age, but you’d be wrong. The students in Christina’s school are studying how a bill becomes a low in the United States, and one of them gets belligerent about the power the president has to pardon criminals. We find out this girl’s parents “disappeared” due to the fact they were leftist supporters – only some of her friends know what happened. And now the girl has been taken out of the school. One day, Christina gets called to the school office where there are government people waiting to take her to a judge. She finds out her parents aren’t really her parents and also finds out her name and birthday aren’t what she thought, either. It’s a little hard to take, obviously. She is sent to live with her biological grandmother in a strange house since her grandmother has been searching for her since she was born. While at school volleyball practice, Christina runs into the girl who disappeared from her school and they have an uncomfortable discussion while naked in the shower. They decide to try to track down as much information about their parents as possible. They were both born in clandestine political prisons and Christina finds out more about her adoptive family and her biological family than she had wanted to. She doesn’t find out where they’re at currently, and then the movie ends. It was very anti-climactic. It just fizzled at the end. There’s very good acting in it, and it looks like it’s going to be a great plot, and then it just doesn’t go anywhere. Very disappointing ending to a decent foreign film.