THE CHALK LINE. Another solid thriller from Spain

There was a time when new Spanish thrillers and crime dramas were appearing on Netflix more often than Tomasz Karolak in Polish romantic comedies. I had the impression that in recent months this trend had slightly weakened, but The Chalk Line (La jaula) is a clear sign that the streaming giant still sees potential in crime stories from Spain. And as it happens, Ignacio Tatay’s feature debut is a good reason to keep investing in Spanish cinema. A common motif in Spanish thrillers is a road incident — such was the case in The Invisible Guest (Contratiempo, 2016) or Mirage (Durante la tormenta, 2018) by Oriol Paulo, and the same goes for Tatay’s debut.

It’s on the road, in the middle of the night, that the main characters — Paula (Elena Anaya) and Simón (Pablo Molinero) — encounter a six-year-old blonde girl (Eva Tennear), showing signs of shock and mutism. The child is placed under the care of a police psychologist, but Paula and Simón, as the ones who found her, remain closely involved. It soon turns out that the girl responds to the name Clara and is most likely a foreigner. Since she reacts well to Paula, the couple decides to temporarily take the girl in. In their unusual multi-level house — where stairs play an important symbolic role — they try to create a sense of home for Clara.

But there’s one small issue: the girl feels safe only inside a shape drawn with chalk on the floor. At first, Clara confines herself to a small rectangle, but Paula and Simón realize that this strange “shelter” can be redrawn and expanded — as long as the boundaries remain clearly defined. This intriguing motif, directly linked to the trauma the innocent child experienced, builds the film’s mysterious atmosphere. At first completely silent, Clara is a complete enigma to Paula and Simón. Even the police psychologists and investigators can’t learn much about the girl found on the road. Only when dangerous incidents begin to occur — leading Paula to suspect the involvement of other people — does the case start to gain momentum.

And this is when Tatay makes his biggest misstep: in a short, tightly edited flashback, he fills in all the narrative gaps, as if wanting to quickly and painlessly rip the bandage of ignorance off the viewer. The effect is the opposite — because it happens so suddenly and rapidly, it feels like being hit over the head: “Here you go, dear viewer, all the missing puzzle pieces; they just got lost earlier, so now I’m dumping them back on you.” Of course, it’s hard to harshly criticize a debut director for such a choice — Tatay even directs this “expository” sequence with considerable skill, and when he uses the well-known Hollywood trick of “revelation” (when the protagonist realizes the clue was in front of her all along), it genuinely lands and feels authentic.

He also succeeds in creating a deeply unsettling atmosphere, thanks in large part to the interiors of the house, which in one scene reflect the couple’s relationship (as one goes upstairs and the other downstairs), and in another, become a metaphor for the titular “Cage.” Crucial to this is Elena Anaya’s credible performance, capturing with great authenticity the unraveling mind of a surrogate mother convinced her adopted daughter is in danger. The Chalk Line is a very solid piece of psychological crime cinema, likely to resonate most with parents — current and future; those already facing the challenges of parenthood and those mentally preparing for it. And even if Ignacio Tatay didn’t avoid a few rookie mistakes, this film is worth a shot — a thoughtful thriller with an unsettling vibe and an original core idea.