IN the late 1980s, adolescent girls are missing from a rural community in southern Spain. Detectives Juan (Javier Gutierrez) and Pedro (Raul Arevalo) have the task of catching a serial killer.

All the elements that comprise writer/director Alberto Rodriguez’s film come together in a satisfying harmony while delivering uncompromising directness and frankness in portraying victims of rape, torture and murder with a verity seldom seen in films in this genre.

How the girls met awful, brutal deaths is never far from the focus of the film’s dramatic structure. But its principal claim on the filmgoer’s attention is the interaction between two detectives who don’t greatly like each other, who have differing approaches to their work, and whom the villagers don’t feel inclined to accept.

Complicating the murder investigations are an industrial dispute between farm workers and land-owners, blood in the urine of one of the detectives portending underlying pain apprehending an uncertain future, and the slow revelation of how the girls, desperate to escape to the glitter of city life, have fallen prey to sophisticated, unscrupulous older men.

The package tells the story well. The locations are sere yet beautiful. Rodriguez stages the action sequences with brio and confidence. The sub-titles are well done. And the film ensures that the intelligence of its audience gets the respect it deserves.

At Palace Electric