In this entertaining thriller, written and directed by the Argentine Lautaro Perotti, Carmen Machi is unforgettable as Olvido, a beer-swilling mother with a strange fixation on the washing machine, whose missing son Beltrán shows up behind the sofa after a 12 year absence. 

Instantly recognised by his nervous aunt Celia, an obsessive knitter of red pullovers, Beltrán’s reappearance offers a neat resolution to an old problem. Yet it also rapidly unravels a family unit precariously held together by a network of lies.

As a study of the terrible fallout from the mother of all untruths, this clever black comedy suggests that the collateral damage of denial may be as destructive as the original sin. For despite the efforts of César, Beltrán’s slightly-older cousin, who has stepped up as ‘man of the house’ in more ways than one, an intrusive village priest’s demand for details as to what exactly happened to Beltrán, serves as the catalyst for all kinds of toxic truths to spill out, breeding yet more invention in an attempt to neutralise them. 

At the play’s climax, a wonderfully farcical scene ensues; a physical manifestation of mental evasion as absurd as that of cutting an unwanted member out of family photographs – and who hasn’t been tempted to do that!