THE WRITER’S BURROW/ LA MADRIGUERA

Spain, 2015, 102 minutes, Colour.
Francisco Conde, Adriana Torrebejano.
Directed by Kurro Gonzalez.

This is a Spanish psychological drama. The focus is on a writer who is suffering from agoraphobia but is also unable to finish his manuscript despite the urgings from his publisher. He is in grief about the death of his wife in an accident. The only other people in his life are a neighbouring boy who likes to play war games and a real estate agent who wants to sell an adjoining apartment.

A young woman, Catarina, is being urged by the publisher to visit the writer to encourage him to continue his manuscript and by the required deadline. She herself wants to be a writer. She does visit, looks around the place, assesses the writer and then leaves. She later invites herself to his house, offers to take him to dinner – and he agrees but, in the taxi, en route to the restaurant, his fears surface again and he returns to his house.

This is when his subconscious urges surface and he has a sexual encounter with the assistant, looking after her with breakfast, urging her to type his handwritten manuscript into the computer. But, then, the plot veers towards that of The Collector, the writer becoming a captor and the assistant a captive, bound, gagged. She uses her ingenuity to try to persuade him to let her go as well as attempts to escape, visits to the toilet, taking the Morse Code symbols from a book, using the bathroom light to send a message.

They work together, the assistant typing in sentences in the manuscripts about her being captive, but the writer discovers these and turns very brutal, raping the woman. On the other hand, she is diabetic, and he has to continue getting pills and syringes, even venturing outside the house, feeling his way along the wall to go to the pharmacy.

There is a further disturbance when the estate agent wants to look at his house with some potential buyers to appreciate what it is like – and he refuses.

The assistant snoops in folders and learns about the writer’s wife.

The police do arrive, ask questions, but it is not until there is a desperate fight, through the apartment and through the wall that the writer is breaking down as he has bought the next apartment for the assistant. There is a violent altercation and the police arrive, the writer taken by ambulance to hospital and the assistant saved.