What does the last sentence mean? The adaptation of Torcuato Luca de Tena’s novel has landed on Netflix and has left us with some questions. Beware of spoilers!
What a finish! ‘The crooked lines of God’, one of the best Spanish films of 2022, has arrived this week at the Netflix film catalog after opening in theaters in October and its passage through the San Sebastián festival. In addition, at the 2023 Goya Awards , Oriol Paulo’s film is up for six awards, including Bárbara Lennie’s for Best Leading Actress.
Undoubtedly, the film has triumphed due to its intricate plot and its ending, which has one of the best surprise final script twists in cinema. Why have you been so hooked? Here we will focus on the plot of the film and not on the novel on which it is based, written by Torcuato Luca de Tena.
The protagonist, Alice Gould, is a researcher who enters a psychiatric hospital simulating paranoia. From what she herself says, Gould had agreed with the Elm Doctor to pose as a patient to investigate the death of his son. According to her doctor, Samuel Alvar (Eduard Fernández), the director of her center is a friend of hers and has agreed everything with him for her admission. Alvar suggested by letter what could be the most affordable reason to make her enter the institution: paranoia.
In the flashback, she is seen rehearsing her preparations, the letters, etc. But the doctor’s reaction is totally opposite to that of Lennie’s character. From that moment, the tape becomes a face to face of Alvar vs. Gould. From then on, she will tip the balance from one to the other: towards the psychiatric boss when the “real” Doctor García del Olmo appears. When the woman is hospitalized in a certain part of the center, her García del Olmo appears to her “the truth is what you want it to be.” So he has a vision in which everything seems to be a ruse by the husband to lock up his wife.
And now we will stand in favor of her. This is how this plot is already counted among the best suspense and thriller movies on Netflix. Everything indicates that Alice’s (Alicia) version is the real one, especially when Dr. Arellano (Javier Beltrán) sees that the woman’s house is empty and sees evidence that agrees with what she has been defending.
playing with the times
That same afternoon, Dr. Castell (Loreto Mauleón) tells him to come back, since strange things are happening. And more that is going to happen, because soon there will be fire, which in fact we have already seen before. The episode of the fire with a deceased that we saw at the beginning was a preview of the night in which Alice tries to escape. It is she who causes the fire to flee. In the midst of this chaos, Remo dies at the hands of the Elephant Man, who kills him out of revenge, believing that he is Romulus, a detail that is resolved later.
What really happens at the end of ‘God’s Crooked Lines’?
Before the medical court, Alvar resigned from his position and therefore from his vote. As he leaves, he mentions Doctor Donadío, the main architect of Alice being in there, to the surprise of the protagonist. The doctor arrives and it is none other than the one we have previously known as Doctor García del Olmo. ” Hello Alice, what trouble have you gotten yourself into this time? ” And Alice herself looks at the camera and… The end.
The end makes us see that this invented disease is the one that the protagonist really has. With that ambiguous phrase pronounced by the psychiatrist, he gives the audience the opportunity to understand that Alice really isn’t mentally well. However, the fact that Lennie stares at the camera has a lot of meaning. It may be that this decision is for each one to draw their own conclusions.
Is he really unstable? Was it the trick of the psychiatric director himself? Perhaps Alvar’s resignation is part of the husband’s plan, which has paid the doctor to make the false report – and pretend that he knows nothing about the matter – and thus keep her fortune. In addition, the plot does not stop showing Alice in such a way that we believe her to be innocent and a victim of her Machiavellian plan.
However, the most logical ending that remains after that sentence is that the investigation and the rest start from a paranoia in his head. One of many, as suggested by his doctor.