Filmmakers’ predilection towards exotic ailments has quite a long history. From Alfred Hitchcock (the eponymous Vertigo, 1958), Christopher Nolan (short-term memory loss in Memento, 2000) to our very own R Balki (progeria in Paa, 2009) various directors have portrayed mysterious maladies in movies with varying results. At first glance, Eugenio Mira’s second full-length feature, the Spanish film Agnosia (2010)—a similar bizarre medical condition in which an individual’s brain loses the ability to process visual, aural, and olfactory stimuli—seems to be a mere addition to this fascination of filmmakers. But curiously enough, drawing that conclusion would be a perceptual error on the part of the viewer. Because Agnosia treats the travail and trauma of a character suffering from the titular affliction merely as a plot point to drive the story forward. As a film it is a period piece, costume drama, triangular romance, and an espionage thriller rolled into one.
Even though the genre-mashing characteristic of Agnosia will become evident to the viewer when s/he is well into its 106-minute running time, the opening sequence makes it amply clear in an instant that what is about to unfold on screen is a sumptuous treat for the eyes. As the story comes to life, Unax Mendía’s (who was also the cinematographer for Mira’s debut feature The Birthday in 2004) camera opens on a valley enveloped within the Great Pyrenees mountains. The year, we are informed, is 1892. The setting, replete with a stage with curtains drawn, a ramp, and vacant chairs arranged in rows gives the impression of a performance about to commence—auguring an important element of the tale.
As the guests, all military officers, arrive in horse-drawn carriages, we find that they have been invited to witness the working of a new invention by an engineer, Artur Prats (Sergi Mateu), employed with the Holbien industries, which has been manufacturing ‘the best weapons’ for many years. The item on display is a catadioptric lens (a mirror lens known for its focusing capabilities) that can be used as a sniper scope. Helping Prats is his little daughter, Joana, who has been entrusted with the responsibility of releasing a bunch of black balloons, which the military officials shoot as targets while looking through the sniper scope.
A visibly distressed Joana becomes even more distraught at the cracks of the rifle, her anguish amplified by the neighing of a horse, which bolts at the sound of the gunshots. When one of the officials shifts his focus and shoots down the animal instead, Joana faints, hitting her head as she falls. As Prats’ assistant Carles Lardin (Eduardo Noriega, nicknamed the ‘Spanish Brad Pitt’, who has acted in films by Alejandro Amenábar, Brad Anderson, and Guillermo del Toro) comes to her rescue, to his utter dismay, he finds that Joana is having trouble distinguishing him from her father. This, coupled with the stage-drama like setting, are nothing but a foretelling of the tale that is about to unfold. If the bursting of the black balloons portended to the dark world Joana will be plunged into, the breaking of the glass of the sniper scope symbolised the shattering of Artur’s dream—both as a parent and a professional.
Seven years pass by. In the meantime, Artur has parted ways with his employer, Lucille Prevert (the prolific German actress Martina Gedeck, whose filmography includes The Good Shepherd and the Academy Award winner The Lives of Others—both in 2006; and The Baader Meinhof Complex in 2008) and has set up his own company, Joana Lenses, with Carles.
Artur treats Carles more as a son than a business partner, and has even promised Joana’s hand to him in marriage. When we first meet the adult Joana (Bárbara Goenaga), we hear her saying she is not comfortable wearing her mother’s clothes. It seems discomfiture has become a way of her life since that tragic incident at the valley. Fate has played a cruel game on Artur as well. A man who manufactures lenses for a living has been left behind with a daughter who cannot even perceive the faces of her close ones, even when they are at an arm’s length. The guilt-ridden Artur, disregarding the fact that his business is going through a rough patch, has employed a doctor, Meissner (Jack Taylor) to cure Joana, on whose methods Carles has very little faith.
The two ways in which we, humans, react to a disorder as strange as the one Joana is suffering from are expressed by two different sets of individuals in Joana’s household. While Carles, though outwardly devoted to Joana, is inwardly aloof; the servants, especially one individual named Mariano—begrudged by the fact that they have to wear different-coloured rosettes, because colour is one of the few stimuli Joana still reacts to—make fun of her.
But, Carles, Artur, and Joana are all unaware that a nefarious ploy is afoot, that will very soon engulf all three lives. It is a plan set in motion by Artur’s former employer, the ruthless Prevert, to extract the formula of the sniper scope—a secret, she believes, is in Joana’s possession. To attain her objective, Prevert plants a spy, Vicent (Félix Gómez), in the guise of a man servant in Artur’s residence. But when Vicent gets inadvertently fired from his job, he is sent back on his mission. Only this time, the plan is to exploit Joana’s malady in a manner reminiscent of Kurosawa’s Kagemusha (1980).
Three days are all that Vicent has at his disposal to coax the formula out of Joana—the period during which Joana will be completely isolated from all stimuli, while being cocooned inside a dark, sound-proofed room, as part of Dr Meissner’s last-ditch attempt to heal her.
But just like the darkest hour is always before dawn, a ray of light will invigorate Joana during those three days. She will, for the first time in a long time, feel as if those distant stars in the sky—the only thing in the world she could see in the same manner as any other individual—have landed inside that dark room, while being ignorant of the fact that she is, in reality, becoming a pawn in a game of deception.
Even though the perpetrators of this reprehensible charade take every precaution, they find themselves completely unprepared by the opposition they come face-to-face with. The adversary in this case is nothing but love—passion that arises from completely unexpected quarters and threatens to jeopardise their elaborate sham.
In an interview, Mira had stated that the reason he chose nineteenth-century Spain as the setting for his film is because modern technology has nullified many of the problems that Joana faces in the film as a result of her ailment. But it is quite apparent that there are certain aspects of human nature that is not bound by any era, period or millennium. Each one of us harbours a secret; our love for another individual is not holistic and all-encompassing, but pigeon-holed to a specific aspect of him or her; and that in the end true love is all about sacrifice—putting the other’s happiness before that of our own.
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