AGUA FRÍA DE MAR

Mariana and Rodrigo, a young upper middle-class couple who are about to get married, find seven year-old Karina on the beach. She ran away from her family and somehow explains she’s living in an environment of family abuse. The couple decide to wait until the next day to seek help, but Karina runs away again before they wake up. For Mariana, this brief encounter will be the cause of an almost unexplainable anguish (when she finally meets the kid again, reality will force her to reconsider the origin of her fears).
One of the merits of Paz Fábrega’s first film is that it transforms the natural beauty of the Bahía Ballena National Park into a place of ambiguity and constant threat, and creates an uncomfortable atmosphere of tension and loneliness that surrounds the lives of the female characters. Agua fría de mar is made of small gestures and everyday situations, in which the closest objects of affection (Mariana’s boyfriend, Karina’s family) not only fall short on providing comfort: they accentuate Mariana and Karina’s feeling of being two people living a place that’s not theirs. (Buenos Aires Film Festival)