Spanish Netflix film “She Walks in Darkness”, which was released in last Friday, is often compelling whenever it focuses on the quiet but intense inner tension surrounding its heroine. While she is willing to put herself into more risk and danger for a cause in which she really believes, she also cannot help but feel conflicted as a double agent dealing with one tricky situation after another, and we are engaged more as observing how she struggles to balance herself well between two opposing groups.

The main subject of the movie is quite interesting to me because I came to know a bit about ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, which means “Basque Homeland and Liberty” in English) in Spain around the early 1990s. As shown from the opening part of the film, ETA caused a lot of violent political troubles in Spain for many years as demanding the independence of the Basque region, but then it came to lose most of its support even in the Basque region as Spain became democratized after the death of Francisco Franco in 1975. In the end, ETA officially declared ceasefires around the 1990s, but a certain faction of ETA continued to commit more acts of terror in public before the conflict was eventually ended in 2011. 

The story, which is set in the 1990s, is mainly driven by a young female police officer named Amaia (Susana Abaitua). Although she has a boyfriend she would marry someday, she is quite determined to do risky jobs for stopping and then neutralizing ETA, and that is why she draws the attention of a high-ranking male police officer who eventually becomes her supervisor. Instantly discerning that she has all the right stuffs for operating as a double agent, he subsequently prepares her for a false identity to fool their opponents, and then she becomes a plain schoolteacher who looks like someone ideal to be recruited by ETA.

Needless to say, it takes some time for Amaia to get herself recruited by Begoña (Iraia Elias), who is incidentally the principles of the school where Amaia works. As the wife of a guy who was one of the key ETA members, Begoña has certainly been involved a lot with ETA for many years, and Amaia’s first mission is getting enough trust from Begoña, who soon comes to believe that Amaia is another ideal young person to sympathize with the nationalistic cause of ETA. At first, she tests Amaia a bit as casually talking with her more, and then she comes to show Amaia more of what she has been doing behind her back along with several key members of ETA.

For a while, Amaia simply remains around Begoña as a newly recruited ETA member, but she soon gets a lot of information as getting involved with ETA more and more. When she inadvertently assists the assassination of one particular local political figure, she is naturally shocked and devastated, but she also knows too well that 1) there was nothing she possibly could do from the very beginning and 2) her participation in this horrible incident will help boosting her position a bit in ETA.

However, though she is still against ETA, Amaia comes to see more humanity from Begoña. Begoña and her colleagues will instantly eliminate Amaia if her true identity is ever exposed, but Begoña is usually nice to Amaia, and, as watching more of how Begoña struggles for not only her political activities but also her daily life, Amaia cannot help but become more conflicted as feeling more care and sympathy toward Begoña.

Although it gets itself decompressed a bit around its middle point, the screenplay by director/writer Agustín Díaz Yanes is later back on its thriller mood as its heroine pushes herself more for getting her secret mission accomplished. We often see how deftly and subtly Amaia delivers bits of information to her supervisor, and there is a brief but suspenseful scene showing how she manages to send an important piece of information to her supervisor without causing any suspicion from Begoña and other key ETA members.

Needless to say, the situation gradually becomes more tense as Begoña and her fellow ETA member come to consider more of the possible existence of a spy among them, No matter how much Amaia tries to maintain her cover, there eventually comes a point where a certain figure enters the picture for tracking her down, and she becomes all the more concerned as being reminded again of how helpless she really is.

Around the narrative point where Amaia’s supervisor and his men are ready to strike upon several spots in Southern France which are very important for ETA, the tone of the movie naturally becomes more serious than before, and we later get a well-executed sequence where Amaia finds herself being totally on her own not long after receiving a subtle sign from her supervisor. What follows next is rather anti-climactic compared to the rest of the story, the main cast members including Susana Abaitua, Andrés Gertrúdix, who incidentally plays Amaia’s supervisor, and Iraia Elias keep us engaged as usual, and Abaitau is particularly commendable for constantly keeping her character’s real feelings and thoughts behind her ambiguous appearance throughout the film.

Overall, “She Walks in Darkness” does not go further than whatever you can expect from its genre, but Yanes did a competent job on the whole without losing any of human dimension in terms of story and characters. I wonder whether it would be better if its story were made into a Netflix TV miniseries instead, but it is still worthwhile to watch on the whole for many reasons, and that is all I can say for now.