Weary of Scandi crime? You might like a slice of Ibero-noir – a Hispanic murder mystery with saturnine cops who more than match Wallander and Sarah Lund for moroseness. Alberto Rodríguez’s film, a major award-winner in Spain, has two distinctive elements. One is the setting, the swamp regions of the Guadalquivir River in Andalucía: we could almost be watching a Spanish-language dub of a Hollywood thriller of the Louisiana bayous. The second is that the film is set in 1980, with the Franco legacy still a raw wound and causing divisions between the film’s two homicide cops: younger, leftist Pedro (Raúl Arévalo) and his hard-boiled ancien regime colleague (Javier Gutiérrez).
Marshland is steeped in ominous atmosphere, but the intrigue packs few surprises – its murky political undertow never quite pays off. Still, the opening aerial shots of river-streaked landscape looking like slices of a huge green brain are something to marvel at.
