The Dollmaker
It is a small town, a safe town, the welcome sign outside Palacios in rural Argentina dubbing it “where nothing bad can happen,” the local diner a hangout where the clientele are served by transvestites, the three brothers who carry the name of the town the police chief, the elderly doctor, running a grief counselling service, and the owner of the Boy Scout Video Store, where the staff are always prepared.
A new officer in town concerned about two women who have disappeared, Juana Santa Cruz and Maria Catalina Villalba, he is told they likely just skipped out on bad marriages, but when a third, Soledad Muriño, also goes missing an investigation is launched, a connection found in that all three are patrons of the video store, though as is pointed out, in a small town, everyone also uses the same grocery store and church.
The time in which it is set unspecified though the posters for Greystoke and Friday the 13th imply the mid eighties, The Dollmaker is Tomás Sanchez (Rodrigo Noya), mouse-like employee of the video store, living with his incapacitated mother and obsessed with dolls his whole life, making the sackcloth-and-button-eyes mannequins for the medical centre’s CPR courses where he meets Tina (Griselda Sanchez), rollerskate waitress at Trixie’s.
Directed by José María Cicala from a script co-written with Sanchez, The Dollmaker is a strange affair, originally titled Encantador, “charming,” though Tomás leans towards creepy, becoming fixated on Tina and becoming furious when he learns she has a daughter and what he presumes to be her protective boyfriend, though if he had watched only a moment longer it would have been apparent the interests of Robert (Guillermo Zapata) lie elsewhere.
A film of shadow and illusion, Tina unable to get go of her loved ones, seeing them around her everywhere she goes, Tomás treating his mother like a doll, bathing and feeding her, spinning her as though she were weightless as they dance then tying her up so she cannot get into trouble when he leaves for work, they both have surrogates to help them through a life with which they struggle, outsiders seeking connection and meaning.
Surreal, abstract and occasionally disjointed with echoes of Psycho, The Shining and Twin Peaks, even a character named Lynch, The Dollmaker is a curiosity without surprise rather than a mystery, the viewer aware early the responsible party, at times a black comedy where the question is less “who” than “why on Earth would they?” and the answer, dumped as a tragic confession thirty years after the fact, not as dramatic as it might be.
The Dollmaker is available on digital download now
