Movie Review: Teen Temptress, Femme Fatale, or Victim? “Nahir”

“Nahir,” a brooding, glamourized and sexed-up account of a notorious Argentine murder case, is a mystery thriller that aims for engrossing and immersive that never falls short of quite watchable along the way.

Screenwriter Sofia Wilhelmi and director Hernán Gu

erschuny take great pains — with flashbacks and flashbacks within flashbacks — to show us several versions of the title character’s account of what happened the fateful night in which she allegedly killed her allegedly abusive lover.

We’re treated to backstory which dissects the aloof and mysterious teen beauty who either planned a crime of lover’s revenge, carried it out and took some pains to cover up her involvement, or didn’t. Not in the ways the earliest versions of her account of that fateful night played out, anyway.

Valentina Zenera plays Nahir as a vain beauty confident in her allure, even at her (seen in a flashback) quinceañera. Nahir dreams of riding the premiere float at Gualeguaychú’s famed carnival parade and riding that to fame as a model.

Not that she says much of this out loud. Nahir is depicted as inscrutable, controlled and controlling. All the boys fancy her and no one gets more of her attention, and manipulation, than 20 year-old Federico (Simon Hempe).

Nahir says they’re broken up. Then they’re together. As the narrative jumps back and forth from “before the crime” (in Spanish with English subtitles) to “after the crime,” we see both their torrid affair — “torrid” at least in his eyes — and her “No, we weren’t dating” way of describing it to her friends and eventually to the cops.

Because one night, Federico rides his motorbike to his doom.

We see how Nahir takes the “news” of his death. “Poker-faced” barely does that reaction justice. We watch the early questioning, the tear she tries to summon up or fake with a tissue.

And we learn that Nahir’s adored and adoring Dad (César Bordón) is a pistol-packing police officer. If there’s one thing that’s become accepted wisdom the world over in recent years, it’s the idea that police in most any country all consider themselves experts in one thing — knowing what they can get away with, and how.

When Dad says “I’ll get you out of here…I’m working on it. You’ll be home by New Year’s,” Nahir believes it. Is it because of what she knows, or what she knows that he knows?

As we see Nahir’s (perhaps) ex-beauty queen mother (Mónica Antonópulos) primp and prep her for a pageant and for a TV prison interview, we pick up on the dynamic of the household and the narcissism of our heroine.

“No crying,” Mom insists before her interrogation. Or did she? Federico’s come-ons are punctuated with a macho “I get anything I want.” Dad wasn’t shy about showing his pistol to would-be stalkers who stare at Nahir in crowds. His icy “princesa” never betrays any emotion at any of this.

The court case reveals more than just the lovers’ exchanged “love of my life” texts. Protesters demand “justice” for Federico, but witnesses paint a more complicated picture of their on-and-off romance. And as her situation isn’t quickly resolved — one way or the other — and her “story” changes, we wonder what really happened.

I like the way the story’s jumps backwards and forwards in time to wrongfoot the viewer. We’re given just enough information to decide on guilt or innocence, and then new information is brought to light. Think again.

Now on Amazon Prime, “Nahir” was longer when it played in Argentina, and reviews of this “true” story there weren’t the best. Perhaps it’s tighter, as the Prime cut of the film is 14 minutes shorter. Or perhaps Argentines are more invested in the story and uninterested in the doubts “Nahir” suggests.

Zenere, underplaying in ways that hint at the character’s similarities to Amanda Knox — accused because she underreacts to news of a murder — makes her character believably guilty or possibly innocent. And whatever verdict, she ensures the narcissistic Nahir is never seen with a hair out of place or eye shadow and earrings that aren’t perfectly matched, even behind bars.

Rating: TV-16, violence, sex, profanity

Cast: Valentina Zenere, Simon Hempe, Mónica Antonópulos and César Bordón

Credits: Directed by Hernán Guerschuny, scripted by Sofia Wilhelmi. An MGM release on Amazon Prime.

Running time: 1:48