Direction: Nic Postiglione
Country: Chile
Immersion is a qualified low budget thriller that focuses on unfounded fear, class gaps and bourgeois prejudice. The debut feature of Chilean Nic Postiglione benefits from a simple but intelligent script as well as an effective direction, but couldn’t have been taken to an above-the-average level without the stunning actor Alfredo Castro. The latter, who showed superior acting skills in the past through films such as Tony Manero (2008), Post Mortem (2010) and White on White (2019), plays a biased middle-class man whose attitudes of superiority and mistrust - typical of a cultural zeitgeist in Chile that discriminates against the indigenous Mapuche people - lead to implacable consequences.
Ricardo (Castro) takes his two daughters - Tere (Consuelo Carreño) and Claudia (Mariela Mignot) - in his yacht to spend the day in the remote lake house where he spent his youth. While navigating the calm waters of the lake, he spotted three men on a small boat that appears to be sinking. He ignores their pleas for help at first but then goes back and agrees to help them.
The constantly tense atmosphere and dark tones of the film are stressed by the unfailingly rigorous lens of cinematographer Sergio Armstrong (a regular choice of the acclaimed director Pablo Larraín), and the sometimes unsettling, sometimes sad sound design of Mauricio López. Being discerning and direct to the point, the film is also measured in form, but it comes with an important message about fear and prejudice.
