Written and directed by Sebaztian Baz, Cande, a young influencer obsessed with the perfect image and absolute control of her virtual life, tries to win back the attention of Ramiro, her ex. In this attempt, she crosses paths with El Polaco, an older taxi driver who is oblivious to the digital world. What starts as an improvised alliance turns into a spiral of obsession, manipulation, and danger. Starring: Candela Del Zotto, Carlos Benincasa, Pablo Alarcón, Iara Ciccone, Sol Echeverría, Quimey Herrera, Agustina Delenko, Camila “Kiki” Karwala and Marta Quarleri.
A big part of how Sombras Chinas holds your attention is its casually unhinged personality which oozes out of the influencer persona of Cande, who is superbly portrayed by Candela Del Zotto. Arguably, the success of Sombras Chinas lied directly on the shoulders of whoever the filmmakers cast as Cande because you spend the majority of the film right in her face, the style really embraces the ‘pick me’, self-obsessive culture, so if the performance fell short, it wouldn’t work but they found a great lead in Del Zotto.
A big part of that is being able to create a character who isn’t necessarily likable, but is watchable, you need to want to know what happens to her, rather than want to look away from the cringeworthy nature of influencer culture, and Del Zotto does well to achieve that balance, it’s quite the tightrope to walk. She manages to keep an undefined quality to Cande, never truly letting you in on what is really authentic or not, how much of it is manipulation, is any of it real? She gets you nicely caught up in her chaos enough to not question it too much, and just enjoy the ride. Even her truly stereotypical influencer behaviour is surprisingly not as irritating as you might expect, and that’s partly to do with the tone being able to not take itself too seriously, and to laugh at that overt, ridiculous behaviour, and because Sebaztian Baz adds layers of mystery to the story.
That’s another key element of Sombras Chinas, the events unravelling in the background and the bigger secrets at work. There’s a quietly sinister edge patiently waiting in the wings which adds a lot to the atmosphere. With that social media style enveloping the entire film, it adds an extra challenge to expand the personality, there are limitations which come with that ratio, but Baz rises to the challenge. The film flows well, there’s a great consistency to the style, without sacrificing the storytelling, and they do well to match the influencer tone, aesthetic choices, and style of content, that many people will be familiar with.
There’s also a lot of great naturally occurring, relevant questions with Sombras Chinas. A particularly interesting one being the culpability of viewers with streams and live videos, where does it cross the line from entertainment to revelling in the distress of others? Glorifying mental illness and unhealthy, dangerous or toxic behaviours? As well as, how much of social media is simply a performance? And many more questions, which can’t definitively be answered, but should be asked.
However, there are a couple of elements holding back Sombras Chinas from reaching its full potential. The first being how the finale plays out, it’s a shame those scenes don’t start slightly sooner to give it more room to deliver its reveal and unpack the secrets with a bigger impact. There was also space to either take the story further, or make it darker with black comedy, to add a couple of extra twists along the way or just truly let loose and stray into horror territory. It would have been interesting to see that final sequence embrace the macabre. The score can also be somewhat generic, it doesn’t always match the tone of the scene.
Sombras Chinas makes a real commitment to recreating that influencer style and it works surprisingly well. It’s certainly a risk to make your debut feature in a 9:16 format, adding more obstacles for yourself, but Sebaztian Baz had a clear vision and executed it strongly. It could go a little bit darker or unravel its story a bit further, but it plays out confidently, it’s entertaining and has a nice edge of mystery and thrill. It’s led by a great performance by Candela Del Zotto who’s well supported by a curious, ominous portrayal from Carlos Benincasa.
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