My wife and I binged watched The Mess You Leave Behind, a Spanish eight-episode series on Netflix. Nothing really messy about it. Instead, a rich and powerful narrative of love and crime, presented in a lovely tapestry that intertwines two engaging stories.
Each of those stories is about a beautiful high school teacher, of the same literature class. The first (Viruca) is found dead in the water, a presumed suicide. The second (Raquel) is her replacement, and has to deal with the same group of students, including a guy who was obsessively in love with Viruca. The cutting between the two stories is artfully done. We see Viruca and Raquel literally in the same classroom, standing before the same mirror, walking the same paths by the river.
Those paths lead to sex, love, and danger. Did Viruca really take her own life or was she murdered? If the latter, by whom? Is Raquel endangering her own life by increasingly wondering about and investigating these questions? The acting -- Bárbara Lennie as Viruca, Inma Cuesta as Raquel, and Arón Piper as Iago, the love-struck teenaged guy who has a violent edge -- is excellent. And the ambience is a creative blend of almost 19-century countryside and 21st smartphones and laptops, all of which play important roles in the twin, intertwining stories.
Carlos Montero gets the "created by" and some of the directing credits. The series is based on his novel of the same name, and its mix of Victorian and digital sensibilities, and the story it tells, is not quite like anything I've seen before. I highly recommend it. Take a look, and see if you agree.
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