After a disturbing prelude, we see Luisa (Érica Rivas),her husband Emilio (Luis Zombrowski) and their daughter Ana (Ornella D'Elía) arrive at the house in the field of Emilio's family to spend the holidays at the end of year. They are awaited there by her mother-in-law Memé (Marilú Marini) and other characters by Daniel Hendler and Valeria Lois, who will later be joined by Alejo (Rafael Federman).

Paula Hernández's film is narrated above all from the point of view of Luisa and partly from Ana's (part of the viewer's task in the initial sections will be to establish the kinship between the characters). Shortly after joining the family group, the unsaid tensions begin to erupt, with coming-of-age shocks, marital conflicts, labor and vocational issues, patrimonial disagreements and a subtle but clear conflict of powers with a certain patriarchal stamp. Not less is Alejo's interference as a catalyst for the new dynamics that is set in motion. And it is about concrete conflicts, not diffuse or vaporous as in a Henry James novel or a Silvina Ocampo story.

Paula Hernández displays a great management of the staging always fully functional to the moods of her characters: sequence shots, travelings, close-ups, blurred, out of fields, achieving climates of claustrophobic oppression when necessary in a film whose tension does not stop growing.

The performances are very good, revealing Hernández's solvency in directing actors (there are several "choral" scenes) but it is Erica Rivas who offers us an astonishing range of nuances with her small gestures, her looks, her tones of voice, in a Luisa that will emerge different from the journey of The Sleepwalkers.

Because as in the later Las siamesas, it is the outer journeys that operate in her female characters as inner journeys where a horizon of liberation appears as possible.

Film selected to represent Argentina in the nominations for the Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film.

With surprising performances and a camera in the best Lucrecia Martel style Los Sonámbulos is about family secrets and a lot more. Both the music and the photography are fundamental parts of this drama about a eternal tragedy. Paula Hernandez achieves a sordid and tetric climax relying on excellent performances.

When you sit through to the end of a movie out of moral duty you know there's something afoot. Despite the pretty good performances the thematic focus is totally pedestrian and predictable. Ergo, uninspiring.

I'm a woman and not against feminism in art properly done.

But this film just plods along never really rising to any heights that might grab the viewer emotionally or intellectually.

The annual family get together as a trope to explore responsibility, sexism and repression within the extended family has been done to death, most inspirationally by various Scandinavian auteurs. This one just misses the mark in its ordinariness, cinematically speaking.

Three stars for the gorgeous cinematography and general camera work.