I may not understand the metaphor or message of the movie. And I may be the problem and reason why. What was a good, if not especial, movie about a crime that our protagonist was accused of committing, ends up too "in the air". The movie is entertaining, for the most part, but it ends being shallow and pointless.
My biggest problem is that theories crumble down. I like open endings, but this is more like a black hole. Three theories that do not work:
1) She's the killer. It was all her plan since the start and "played the part" to make her family invest everything in the trial to try and prove her innocence. That's why she laughs at the Puma in the ending. The Puma was real. It was true. And yet, nobody is aware of it, moving on with their lives believing a lie, that there is not a dangerous Puma free. Well, everybody in her house and the judicial system think she wasn't guilty (or declared her not guilty). Unaware of the true. She did kill her friend. She's the dangerous Puma that nobody knows it exist. But that's not great. She was absolved because of a "lack of evidence", but that doesn't mean that everybody believes she's innocent. They go out of their way to say that there are going to appeal the decision. And we don't see much media, nor people not in the family. So that analogy doesn't necessarily work.
2) She's not the killer, but she's happy that her "friend" died. In that case, the evidence was against her. She cleaned the scene as well as she could. She was happy the "friend" died, but got scared about the chances to becoming the main suspect. The "shock" her father always talks about, the "not talking", the "self imposed" reclusion, was the part she had to play not be blamed because she knew how big the case against her was. In reality she was totally happy about the outcome. But she understood the optics of the situation and the need of her family to invest everything. She acted accordingly. Problem with this one is, then why she constantly acts in ways that jeopardize her parents inclination to keep sacrificing everything for her and the trial? Besides, what about the Puma? She laughs because people bought her "act" while the true about the Puma wasn't believed? If she is innocent, people believing she is, is in fact the contrary to people not believing about the Puma, so I don't know how to make sense of that ending in this case.
3) She's not the killer and everything she does is her honest reaction to everything. Her contradictions are not manipulative but just stressful reactions and at the end, she laughs about seeing the Puma because she knows the true about the murder too. She didn't do it and yet nobody believes her. Like nobody believes the old lady. She laughs in isolation. Because she identifies now with the "crazy old lady". She too, was categorized as a "crazy girl" and no one believed her. But the problem here is that the analogy is not great. Tangential proof was against her, and it was hard to believe a Puma was running wild in a city. But besides that, we never see her having an opinion about the Puma story. Had we seen her believing the story, or the contrary, then the conclusion would've make sense as an "arc". She either didn't believe the story, and seeing the Puma reminded her that she was as bad as the people not believing her when she always told the truth. Or she did believed the old lady, laughing happy to see that true to finally come out and win, like her trial. But we don't know. There is no "arc" into that subplot for her, so the laughing has no real impact.
Mediocre then
My biggest problem is that theories crumble down. I like open endings, but this is more like a black hole. Three theories that do not work:
1) She's the killer. It was all her plan since the start and "played the part" to make her family invest everything in the trial to try and prove her innocence. That's why she laughs at the Puma in the ending. The Puma was real. It was true. And yet, nobody is aware of it, moving on with their lives believing a lie, that there is not a dangerous Puma free. Well, everybody in her house and the judicial system think she wasn't guilty (or declared her not guilty). Unaware of the true. She did kill her friend. She's the dangerous Puma that nobody knows it exist. But that's not great. She was absolved because of a "lack of evidence", but that doesn't mean that everybody believes she's innocent. They go out of their way to say that there are going to appeal the decision. And we don't see much media, nor people not in the family. So that analogy doesn't necessarily work.
2) She's not the killer, but she's happy that her "friend" died. In that case, the evidence was against her. She cleaned the scene as well as she could. She was happy the "friend" died, but got scared about the chances to becoming the main suspect. The "shock" her father always talks about, the "not talking", the "self imposed" reclusion, was the part she had to play not be blamed because she knew how big the case against her was. In reality she was totally happy about the outcome. But she understood the optics of the situation and the need of her family to invest everything. She acted accordingly. Problem with this one is, then why she constantly acts in ways that jeopardize her parents inclination to keep sacrificing everything for her and the trial? Besides, what about the Puma? She laughs because people bought her "act" while the true about the Puma wasn't believed? If she is innocent, people believing she is, is in fact the contrary to people not believing about the Puma, so I don't know how to make sense of that ending in this case.
3) She's not the killer and everything she does is her honest reaction to everything. Her contradictions are not manipulative but just stressful reactions and at the end, she laughs about seeing the Puma because she knows the true about the murder too. She didn't do it and yet nobody believes her. Like nobody believes the old lady. She laughs in isolation. Because she identifies now with the "crazy old lady". She too, was categorized as a "crazy girl" and no one believed her. But the problem here is that the analogy is not great. Tangential proof was against her, and it was hard to believe a Puma was running wild in a city. But besides that, we never see her having an opinion about the Puma story. Had we seen her believing the story, or the contrary, then the conclusion would've make sense as an "arc". She either didn't believe the story, and seeing the Puma reminded her that she was as bad as the people not believing her when she always told the truth. Or she did believed the old lady, laughing happy to see that true to finally come out and win, like her trial. But we don't know. There is no "arc" into that subplot for her, so the laughing has no real impact.
Mediocre then
