Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Perdida’ on Netflix, A Messy Argentinean Thriller About Sex Trafficking

A teenager named Cornelia goes missing on a school trip to Patagonia. Fourteen years later, her best friend, Pipa, is a hard-boiled cop devoted to rescuing kidnapped girls. When Cornelia is finally declared dead, Pipa is pushed to re-open the case. Netflix’s Perdida is an Argentinean thriller with a devious sex trafficking tie-in, but does it hold up to the likes of Gone Girl or The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo?

PERDIDA: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Perdida opens on a manhunt for a missing girl, Cornelia, in 2003 Patagonia. We see one of her devastated friends, Pipa, watching the search from a chalet, and then we jump 14 years into the future to where Pipa is in the middle of a daring rescue operation. Now an elite cop, Pipa is devoted to saving girls from sex trafficking rings. Pipa is soon undone, though, by an invitation to Cornelia’s memorial service. Cornelia’s mother explains that someone sent in her daughter’s obituary into the paper and that it’s up to Pipa to re-open the case.

Pipa embarks on a search for the truth, all while flashing back to the Patagonia trip in question. There was some drama amongst their tight-knit friend group of popular girls, and a love triangle between Cornelia, their group’s queen bee, and a cute boy was brewing. However, it also seems that Cornelia was tied to a vicious sex trafficking ring, run in part by a prostitute/madam named “Mermaid,” who has fought her way to the top by overcoming abuse, torture, and every horror imaginable.

The story is fraught with sexual violence, rowdy violence, emotional violence, and one kind of great plot twist.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Perdida feels from the get go like it wants to be in the same conversation as The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and Gone Girl (to the point that Perdida is a rip-off of Gone Girl‘s Spanish name). For the first 20 minutes, it definitely feels up to the challenge. The opening act is full of striking visuals that set up a sense of unease, and Pipa is a badass in action. However…well, however…it peters out of power about half way in.

Performance Worth Watching: The film’s best parts are found in its female leads. Luisana Lopilato is a really fun, brittle action heroine, reminding me at times of Jodie Foster in Silence of the Lambs. (Imagine my surprise when I realized she’s the same Luisana Lopilato that Michael Bublé is married to! She can do more than be in People magazine fluff pieces!) That said, Gran Hotel, Velvet, and Tiempos y guerra alum Amaia Salamanca slinks away with the whole movie. She’s devious and odd and campy in the best way.

Memorable Dialogue: The really big lines are absolute spoilers, so I’ll leave you with this haunting bit of dialogue. A younger version of the Mermaid, disfigured by enemies and sentenced to death by her keepers, bargains with her killer for her life. She takes command of his gun, looks at him, and says, “She and I are going to live.” It’s a simple line, but Salamanca says it like a queen issuing a decree. 

Single Best Shot: I’m going to be haunted for a very long time by how the film starkly sets up that same execution scene: an overhead shot of crops and four girls huddled together, one already dead. The smallness of the girls an indicator of how little they matter to the people who wrongfully own them.

Sex and Skin: First of all, this is a movie about sex slavery, so trigger warning to the highest degree. We get a few shots where the female characters are topless, but everything sensitive is kept out of the frame. Later in the film, one character witnesses another’s rape, which sets off a tragic series of events, but that’s also done with clothes all on. BUT AGAIN IT’S SEXUAL ASSAULT.

Our Take: Perdida is sadly a mixed bag. There are plot twists and performances that make it intriguing enough – and the subject matter is for sure a dark, devious underworld that needs to be dragged into the light. However, it’s slow-moving and confusing. There are scenes that could be cut down, and at the end of the day, creatively it’s kind of a paint-by-numbers thriller.

Our Call: Skip It, but remember the names Luisana Lopilato and Amaia Salamanca. They’re both really, really good.

Where to Stream Perdida