About Despues de Lucia I have heard a lot of good things this year. It participated in the Venice Film Festival and then it won the ‘Un certain Regard’ award at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. I went to see it a few evenings ago and it succeeded in surprising me in the strongest possible way.

It’s not a movie about which we could talk in terms of liking it or not. It’s rather a shocking movie, with realistic facts, which made me thing that actually things are really going in the wrong direction.

Roberto and his high-school daughter Alejandra move to a new town after the tragical death in a car accident of Lucia, his wife and her mother. Both have physical issues, both were very affected of this loss, but try to move on. He finds a new jobs, she goes to a new school. Everything seems to be going well, but as things evolve, everything is actually going from bad to worse.

She gets videotaped having sex with one of her school mates, the video is made public and from this point onwards it’s like she is attacked at each step by a big wolf pack. She is laughed at, embarrassed, humiliated, beaten, raped by her colleagues who just turn into some heartless creatures, trying to devour all her energy.

I was watching the movie and kept asking myself  ‘Are these things actually happening in real life as well? Is it possible that some 16 – 17 year old teenagers be capable of this?’. It’s true that the movie has a rather exaggerated view of the story, but in the same time I think that yes, these things really can happen in our society, where values like respect, morality and decency are no longer promoted.