Follies

The film closes on the night Renata finally decides she cannot stay confined any longer. After the supermarket protest that earned her an ankle‑monitor and a house‑arrest sentence, she lives in the old family home of Ismael, a man who has sold his ancestral house to start over. When Serena, a broker who has been flirting with Renata, arrives for a tarot reading, she notices the monitor and, unsettled by Renata’s fierce contempt for the privileged class, abandons the plan to buy the property. The camera lingers on Renata’s face as the door to the house creaks open; she steps out into the dark street, the monitor flashing faintly, suggesting a desperate bid for freedom even if it means living without a roof or medication.

Parallel threads reach their own uneasy conclusions. Penelope, a veterinarian who assists in euthanising a dog that—ironically—shares her name, is shaken to the core. The act forces her to confront her own terror of a meaningless death and to realize that her partner Aurelio can never truly understand the depth of her anguish. Their relationship fractures, leaving Penelope alone in the rain, a symbol of how people who feel too much are often dismissed as “over‑reacting.”

Miranda, the middle‑aged wife of Renata’s boss, has finally surrendered to the illicit desire she has been hiding. After a brief but intoxicating encounter with Renata, she chooses passion over the façade of a respectable marriage, even as she continues to lie to her own mother about the state of her relationship.

Irlanda, Renata’s psychiatrist, spends her birthday dinner tearing down the family’s pretensions. When her abusive ex‑husband Facunda is summoned by their mother, she refuses to forgive him and, in a defiant gesture, smashes the cake‑covered tablecloth while exposing the hidden secrets of her siblings. Her act of rebellion underscores the film’s message that protecting one’s dignity often means confronting the patriarchal lie that “everything is fine.”

Finally, Soledad, an actress in a workshop, endures a series of staged assaults that blur the line between performance and violation. The climax arrives on an overcrowded subway, where a hand brushes her thigh and she screams, releasing the rage she has been forced to internalise. Her outburst signals a breaking point for a woman whose body has repeatedly been treated as a prop.

The final image—Renata slipping away from the house, the ankle monitor blinking in the night—leaves the audience with an ambiguous hope. She may be fleeing toward an uncertain horizon, perhaps to find Miranda or simply to live outside the constraints imposed upon her. The ending does not promise a tidy resolution; instead, it emphasizes that each character, in their own fractured way, chooses either to stay silent within a broken system or to step out of it, no matter the cost.

Last Updated: December 10, 2025 at 15:53