THE STORY – Attorney Soledad Deza takes on the case of a young woman unjustly sentenced to prison after being accused of having an illegal abortion. Both women face a corrupt legal system and a society that wants to see them fail. As Belén’s case gains notoriety, a women’s movement emerges that resonates throughout Argentina.
THE CAST – Dolores Fonzi, Camila Plaate, & Laura Paredes
THE TEAM – Dolores Fonzi (Director/Writer), Laura Paredes, Augustina San Martin & Nicolás Britos (Writers)
THE RUNNING TIME – 105 Minutes
In the conservative Argentinian province of Tucumán in 2014, a young woman had a miscarriage. That same night, she was arrested in the hospital by police who claimed she was actually suffering from an illegal self-induced abortion. After spending two years in prison, her case finally reached a courtroom, where she was found guilty and sentenced to eight years. That’s when high-powered defense attorney Soledad Deza took an interest in her case, giving her a second chance with an appeal. As her legal team fought the system to get justice, her case made national headlines, sparking a grassroots movement that had countless women shouting her name in the streets in support, not just for her, but also for the rights of all women. Afraid of the backlash her family would receive if her name were to get out, the young woman didn’t want to use her real name, but she approved the use of an alias. The name she used, which director and co-writer Dolores Fonzi has now taken for the name of her film about her, was “Belén.”
Fonzi, who also stars as Deza, has set a massive challenge for herself with this film. Not only did she wear multiple hats in the making of it, but the nature of this true story requires a deft touch to connect the personal circumstances of Belén’s story with the national movement she helped spark. The film must also balance its time between Deza and Belén, here given the “real” name Julieta, as evenly as possible to avoid making Julieta a secondary character in her own story. Juggling so many elements—the personal and the political, the local and the national, the legal and the medical, the incarcerated and those fighting on their behalf—would trip up a lesser artist. Fonzi and her collaborators rise to the challenge, though, filling this true-life legal drama with a vitality that makes it feel all the more urgent, even if you know how the story ends.
It’s not surprising that a team of women making a film, at least in part, about a team of women so effortlessly captures the communal spirit that powered so much of the movement to free Belén. Still, Fonzi’s dynamic direction gets you engrossed in the story and characters almost immediately and never lets you go. The usage of cell phone footage and social media posts invigorates the film, heightening its immediacy and capturing the revolutionary spirit that was building in Argentina at the time. Fonzi, herself an activist who once carried a “Free Belén” sign to accept an award, knows what it’s like on the front lines of a social movement. Every decision she makes behind the camera builds towards the moment when Julieta finally sees the protesting crowds in person and is overcome by the force of all these people chanting for a person they’ve never met, or even seen. It’s a decisive moment, acted with crushing intensity by Camila Plaate and creatively visualized by Fonzi and cinematographer Javier Juliá.
Fonzi and co-writers Laura Paredes, Augustina San Martin, and Nicolás Britos didn’t have to do much with the real-life story to add any suspense or heighten the stakes. This leaves much of the film feeling a bit too close to the average episode of “Law & Order: SVU” for comfort, with every conceivable legal roadblock imaginable making an appearance at some point. However, the team’s compression of the story into an easily digestible 105 minutes is incredibly smart, most notably in how they weave in events that actually happened later to comment on and contextualize Belén’s story. The screenplay also never forgets to be funny, a blessing in a story that goes to such dark places. That’s not to say the film is a laugh-a-minute riot, just that humor is an important release valve in dark, heavy stories, and Fonzi & Co. know just when to pull it.
As befits the deeply personal subject matter, “Belén” doesn’t end on a note of pure uplift. Julieta, just like the real Belén, has anonymity on her side while she sifts through the wreckage of this harrowing experience, but will she ever be able to make it to the other side? This is relatively recent history, and Argentina is still working its way through the fallout of this cultural revolution. Fonzi and her team allow the catharsis of the climax to play out before taking the more sobering long view of the situation. Belén was the spark; the fire is still burning. “Belén,” crowd-pleasing though it is, knows that progress happens far more slowly than we’d like. Honoring its protagonist’s struggle by embracing every bit of the difficulty of that struggle, while keeping a deliberate (if not exactly slow) pace, keeps the film grounded in a darkness that Fonzi ensures is always present. While that might seem overwhelming, it gives the film a sense of realism that lifts it above most legal dramas.
