God's Crooked Lines

A private investigator has herself committed to a psychiatric hospital to solve a murder, telling the staff exactly that on arrival — which is, of course, precisely what a patient with her diagnosis would say. From then on every piece of evidence reads two ways, and the film is disciplined about never letting you settle.

Adapted from Torcuato Luca de Tena's 1979 novel, which he wrote after having himself voluntarily admitted to an asylum to research it. Bárbara Lennie carries almost every scene and has to play both readings of her character at once without tipping either way.

Oriol Paulo is Spain's most reliable maker of this kind of puzzle film, and at two and a half hours this is his most patient — closer to a character study wearing a thriller's clothes.