The Delay (2012)

Directed by: Rodrigo Plá
Country: Uruguay / Mexico / France

Review: After the good results obtained with “Desierto Adentro” e “La Zona”, Uruguayan-born filmmaker living in Mexico Rodrigo Plá, works once again with the screenwriter Laura Santullo. This time the story is set in Montevideo, depicting an obnoxious episode involving Maria, a single mother who works at home for a textile factory to sustain the family, and Augustin, her aged, fragile, and often forgetful father who needs care and attention.  Each day with less time to work due to her father’s condition, Maria is visibly tired and in a verge of a nervous breakdown, trying all the possible ways to get rid of him yet without success. First she tries her sister who refuses to take care of him, and then the social security services but without much hope; that’s when Maria decides to abandon him in a park bench in plain winter. “The Delay” is slow, meticulous, and emotionally strong, depicting the despair and regret of a woman who, in a moment of madness, was capable of a premeditated cruelty with disturbing cold blood. I confess that I was expecting something more from its ending, but the film deals very realistically with the problems of conscience and social gaps in a modern society. The acting by Roxana Blanco and Carlos Vallarino are worth mentioning, while the direction is aesthetically valuable with precise close-ups that easily bring out the weight of the circumstances.