Elisa Zulueta as Mercedes.
While ‘In her Place’ is based on a dramatic real-life event ( see below), director Maite Alberti has turned things on their heads and with the gentle observant manner developed during her years as an award- winning documentary film maker (The Mole Agent 2020 / The Eternal Memory 2023), using her passion for seeking out ‘the intimate portraits of small worlds,’ she created the fictional character of Mercedes (beautifully played by Elisa Zulueta)whose story is interwoven with the violent event of a homicide in Chile in 1955.
Francisca Lewin as María Carolina Geel & Nicolás Saavedra as Roberto
In 1941, the celebrated writer María Luisa Bombal shot her lover Eulogio Sánchez Errázuriz in the arm 3 times at the luxurious Crillón Hotel in Santiago, Chile. So, when on April 14, 1955, writer Georgina Silva Jiménez (pen name María Carolina Geel) shot and killed her lover Roberto Pumarino Valenzuela by shooting him five times in the face at the exact same hotel, the two murders were instantly linked. Roberto Pumarino was 14 years younger than Geel (played by Francisca Lewin), and married when they met. He had left his wife to be with Geel, with whom he had become besotted. It has been speculated that Geel was influenced by María Luisa Bombal’s experience.
In María Carolina Geel’s celebrated book about life in prison while she was on remand, “Cárcel de Mujeres (Women’s Prison), Geel said her motive for committing the violent crime was that she realized she was trapped in a toxic relationship with a rigidly patriarchal man. She had refused to marry Roberto despite him asking her many times. Later, it was revealed by a family member that Roberto, tired of being turned down, had given up and decided to marry Alicia Castro, a family friend, instead, driving Geel into a fit of jealousy.
Thus, in the end the real motive for her actions was never clarified and the trial turned into a media circus. In particular, because, after she had shot her lover, she leapt onto his body and some journalists wrote that had she tried to drink his blood. Others insisted she was kissing him goodbye. Judge Aliro Veloso (Marcial Tagel), convinced only a person suffering momentary madness could carry out such a crime, ordered a psychological evaluation & labelled it a ‘crime passionnel’. She was acquitted.
Elisa Zulueta as Mercedes and Pablo Macaya as husband Efraín
However, after Geel had published her best-selling book, the Judge became sceptical thinking her actions could, in fact, have been designed to boost her flagging career, so, in the end, she was found guilty and sentenced to 3 years. However, the Nobel Prize laureate Gabriela Mistral came to her aid, persuading Chilean President Carlos Ibáñez del Campo to grant her a presidential pardon.
Mercedes is a para-legal secretary working for Judge Aliro Veloso. She is married to a somewhat tacky wedding photographer with two sons who take her for granted. This interesting fictional character of Mercedes, despite her different circumstances, echoes the famous writer’s worst fears.
Using the metaphor of a fancy 1950s floor-polisher in the parallel stories, Alberdi questions patriarchy, using this particular gadget to describe pressures of life in an institutionalized traditional marriage. The floor-polisher comes to represent all that is wrong for women who wish to be recognized as independent, intelligent beings.
Francisca Lewin ( María Carolina Geel) arriving at court.
The highlight of the film is, in many ways, the wonderful scene where the enraged Geel disposes of her birthday “gift” from Roberto of a fancy new polisher, flinging it into the river from the top of a bridge. She has taken it as an insult from her lover who seems unable to see her as a woman in her own right and not only as possible marriage material.
Meanwhile back in Mercedes’ hum-drum married existence, her broken-down polisher has waited forever to be mended. When her reluctant husband eventually mends it, she cannot bear to look at it, finally realizing what it represents for her fading hopes and dreams.
As the Geel court case develops, Mercedes finds, by chance, that she has access to Geel’s luxurious apartment, where she spends as much time as she can trying to live a life she can only dream of. In awe of this independent women who stood up for her beliefs, Mercedes spends the time in Geel’s flat reading her books, lying in her bed with a fag & a tipple and even dares to venture out to work wearing Geel’s clothes and make- up. Could she become someone else?
Her pretence of being a family member breaks down when one of Geel’s long term friends turns up, (the handsome and seductive Renée Cárdenas, played by Néstor Cantillana), who emphasizes yet more aspects of a life out of her reach.
When María Carolina Geel is released, Mercedes watches her dreams rapidly fade as she bids a sorrowful farewell to the apartment she had grown to love as a refuge from the noise’ and pressures of her life and marriage. but not before her husband discovers her there.
This is an interesting use of a real story to analyse the patriarchal society in Chile in the 1950s. It could be asked as to how much things have changed since then, as societal norms move so slowly.
But can things ever be the same again?
Maite Alberdi director.
IN HER PLACE (2024) is available on Neflix.
Director: Maite Alberdi / Book: When Women Kill (Las Homicidas) by Alía Trabucco Serán/ Screenwriters: Inés Bortagaray, Paloma Salas /DOP: Sergio Armstrong ACC/ Editor: Alejandro Carillo Penovi and Javier Estévez/ Production: Juán de Díos Larraín, Pablo Larraín and Rocío Jadué / Music: José Miguel Miranda (Original Music) & José Miguel Tobar (original music)/ Sound designer: Miguel Hormazábal / Sound editor: Dante Vásquez.
CAST: Mercedes: Elisa Zulueta/ María Carolina Geel: Francisca Lewin/ Judge Aliro Veloso: Marcial Tagle/ Efraín: Pablo Macaya / Domingo: Gabriel Urzúa/ Renée Cárdenas: Néstor Cantillana /
