A favourite on the festival and arthouse circuit, Chilian filmmaker Pablo Larrain is a difficult one to fin down, his previous seven features covering a very wide range of genres and styles, from the superannuated disco dancing world of the violent Tony Manero (’08), the world of ruthless political manipulation of No (’12), a conflicted priest encountering deep corruption in The Club (’15), and, in his first English language film, the post-JFK assassination world of Jackie (’16). As critics have noted, Ema is one of his more impassioned films, more in the style of the vivid and often brutal Manero rather than the calm, more studied dramas which he had made more recently, and revolved around a dancer, the title character, played by Mariana Di Girolamo (Hotel Zentai / Harem), the wife of Gastón (Larrain regular Gael Garcia Bernal), and a member of his dance company, and the audience is tipped off as to Ema’s volatile nature when she is first seen setting fire to a traffic light, hinting at worse to come. Having adopted a six-year-old boy, Polo (Cristián Suárez), Ema is also determined to raise their child the way she decides, clashing with the social worker who visits, and when the young boy also seems to have a taste for arson, her decision to leave Gaston sets off a series of quite frighteningly cold and devious events, Ema being determined not only to get her adopted son back, worryingly seeming to see a kindred spirit, but also to insert herself into the lives of the boy’s new adoptive parents, Anibal (Santiago Cabrera - TV’s The Musketeers / Star Trek: Picard), ironically a fireman, and Raquel (Paola Giannini - El Circuito De Román), but also involve Gastón in what seems to be a bizarre and deliberately twisted simulacrum of the happy modern family.

Di Girolamo delivers the central performance in a number of ways, in a series of kinetic dance sequences, as well dominating almost everybody she comes across, from such simple actions as refusing to follow her husband’s dance choreography to longer-term plans of usurping and controlling anybody near to her, being determined to have her way no matter the cost, at least to others. As her plan progresses, and she becomes involved with both Anibal and Raquel, it becomes increasingly worrying just how far Ema will go, the character being that unpredictable. But Larrain also adds hints that Polo himself may be more like Ema than we suspect, as evidence of other deeply unsettling events in his past, such as wheat is discovered in the freezer, start to emerge.

A drama which touches both on black comedy and psychological horror, Ema secured some strong reviews from critics, The Playlist admitting ‘Larraín’s Ema will grate some. Even so, it’s one of the most ambitious and visually stunning films of the year, with Screen Daily saying ‘At once a visually expressionistic hymn to female agency and liberation, a psychological thriller that always stays one step ahead of the viewer and a flamboyant reggaeton dance musical,Ema will strike some as a heady celebration of a movie, while leaving others bemused by stylistics that sometimes overpower narrative and psychological plausibility’. IndieWire believed ‘Ema doesn’t always dance to a clear or recognizable beat, but anybody willing to get on its wavelength will be rewarded with one of the year’s most dynamic and electrifying films’, as did The Wrap, saying ‘Larraín’s odd little film dances to the beat of its own drum, that’s for certain. But it does pay off in a wholly satisfying way’. Not on the same song sheet were The Hollywood Reporter calling it ‘A work of self-conscious experimentalism that's too stilted and distancing to invite involvement, it gets some mileage out of the pulsating rhythms of reggaetón street dance but otherwise is so fragmented it lacks forward motion’.