Wakolda (12A)

Directed by Lucía Puenzo

3/5

At a stop over on their way to Bariloche, afoot the Andes, a family is asked by a sinister stranger to travel in their convoy across desolate Patagonia for safety.

It is 1960. The foreigner (Alex Brendemuhl) introduces himself as Helmut Gregor — Josef Mengele’s name on his Vatican passport — and shows an obsessive interest in the 12-year-old disabled daughter Lileth, (Florencia Bado),.

As the family reaches the hotel they aim to reopen just outside Bariloche, Gregor goes on to the town, which has a large nazi-sympathising German community.

Within days Gregor/Mengele, unable to resist the lure of Lileth’s health problems, is back and rents a room at the hotel. Enzo, (Diego Peretti), Lileth’s father, is mistrustful.

But his pregnant, German-speaking wife Eva (Natalia Oreiro) is persuaded in favour of using cattle growth hormone to reverse Lileth’s plight.

While examining Eva, Gregor/Mengele realises that she’s expecting twins — Mengele had a predilection for torturing twins in vile pseudo-medical experiments in Auschwitz.

When Eva gives birth prematurely he calculatingly puts their lives in jeopardy. 

Puenzo based the film on her own fictional novel by the same title and herein lays the problem.

While the dramatic device is ingenuous, its power to deliver over and above the predictable suspense and menace can be questioned.

As a story, it may plausibly mirror the horrors of families Mengele would have preyed on during his 30-years-long run from justice, but the larger picture is underdeveloped.

The one-dimensional Mossad agent Nora (Elena Roger), Eichmann’s capture TV news flash or the assorted nazi sycophants around the notorious school, which Lileth attends, are not nearly enough to paint a convincing picture.

Ultimately Wakolda does not credibly reconcile — particularly for the uninitiated — this most odious individual with the full measure of nazi crimes against humanity.

It, thereby, allows him to get away both metaphorically and de facto when he’s whisked away in a seaplane.