The Curses: A miniseries from Argentina, a missed film, not very incisive

Roman Sabate, a trusted man of Argentine governor Fernando Rovira, has kidnapped Zoe, the politician's twelve-year-old daughter. The parent is about to pass a law, imminent for approval, concerning the fate of some villages in favor of private companies interested in lithium. Precisely for this reason, he doesn't immediately realize what has happened, but is warned by Beto, the girl's driver, and finally understands the gravity of the situation. 

Without wasting any more precious time, Rovira calls a henchman under his employ, Rogelio Vargas, and police officer Juan Carlos Ortiz to handle the case and find his daughter before it's too late. Convinced that Roman has become an environmentalist and is using Zoe to influence his decision, Vargas tracks him down. But the story turns out to be far more complex than it seems, and a secret that the main protagonists of the story share, concerning an event that happened many years ago, risks putting things in another light.

Who casts the curses?

One wonders why a story that unfolds over a total of less than two hours was split into a miniseries and not released as a proper film. The Curses, in fact, a new exclusive to the Netflix catalog, is a kind of full-fledged film divided into three distinct acts, with even the management of plot twists and various characters seeming to follow more feature film logic than a serial format. Perhaps the streaming platform hoped to attract a larger audience who, according to the unwritten laws of binge-watching, intends to devour episode after episode, but the logic of such choices appears at least questionable to a critical eye.

So here we are talking about a story that unfolds between past and present, with the second episode set exclusively in the past, intended to reveal the dynamics underlying the entire operation. An initially disorienting choice that progressively harmonizes, finding a more or less exhaustive outlet in a finale that connects the various dots. A undoubtedly intriguing screenplay in its key points, but one that at times risks leaving something behind and doesn't always fully explore the motivations of all the characters.

From paper to screen, once again

At its core is Claudia Pineiro's novel of the same name, also distributed in Italy by Feltrinelli, which attempted to blend noir atmospheres with a kind of social commentary, emerging in environmental themes and the fight against multinational corporations that wield power at the expense of the common good. In this live-action version, an attempt is made to combine these two narrative elements, but the necessary balance is not found, with some situations handled too quickly and the lack of that broad scope that would have made such instances resonate with greater (pre)potence.

The aforementioned flashback is certainly too long, and while mandatory to reveal the centrality of the ties between the trio of main figures, dedicating a single segment to a revelation that could have taken half the time risks being counterproductive to the overall coherence. And at the end of The Curses, one wonders how much the story narrated therein truly reached the hearts and minds of the audience. Although well-staged and acted with conviction by a diverse cast led by national star Leonardo Sbaraglia, the impression is that the "fragmented" formula did not benefit The Curses, perhaps ending up burdening with further expectations a story that instead needed to be further streamlined.