Paulina Escobar (Sigourney Weaver) and her lawyer husband Gerardo (Stuart Wilson) live in a remote home in a South American country still dealing with its recent dictatorship. Paulina is on edge haunted by the torture she suffered. One stormy night, Gerardo gets a ride home with neighbor Dr. Roberto Miranda (Ben Kingsley). Paulina recognizes his voice as that of her unseen tormentor and she takes him prisoner. Gerardo tries desperately to talk her out of the situation and agrees to be the man's defense lawyer as she tries him in her trial.It's a three-person play and everybody delivers. Weaver is amazing and Wilson is great. There are simply no words to describe Kingsley. Director Roman Polanski keeps the static location compelling and really relies on the actors to develop the climbing tension.

The movie script of "Death and the Maiden" is originated from a screenplay with the same name by Ariel Dorfman from Chile. This script has a great structure. The wife is listening to the radio while cooking the dinner. The news on the radio tells about foundation of a committee for investigation about tortures and crimes of the previous dictatorship naming someone as the head of this committee. The unusual attention of the wife leads the movie viewers to suppose a relation between the wife and those phenomena. The electricity went off. The fear of the wife might be because of hearing the thunderstorm or remembering past horrors. The wife ran quickly to a battery radio to continue listening to the news. Here, the viewer became sure about the importance of the news. The nervous attitude of the wife, going under the rain, smoking a cigarette and taking a gun by seeing a coming vehicle, either show this. Then, something else happens. The husband introduces himself to the vehicle driver - the doctor- and the viewers figure out that he is the head of the committee. This causes the viewers to forget their previous conclusions and think that the main reason of the wife's reactions is hearing her husband's name. While thinking about this, the dialogs between the couple return the viewers back to the first conclusion. The movie keeps the viewers in a reciprocating situation, which continues along the story. The husband thinks he knows everything about his wife's prison but figures out it was not. The wife gains new information about a sexual relation between his husband and another girl during her prison time and the viewers us not sure about the guilt of the doctor. This uncertainty is smartly placed in the script. In the other side, the battery radio used to show the importance of the news in the beginning of the film, was utilized again in the middle to prove the crime of the doctor without any encounter to went off electricity and plays the "Death and the Maiden" piece to show the title of the film.

(Though this doesn't contain all surprises or, ah hem, spoilers, it does borderline it. #1 just watch the movie – it is a near-masterpiece, a near perfect suspense thriller/mystery everyone (of age) should see. #2 then read my review. It's very hard to write about it without giving away too much.)It was more of a crime that Weaver was neither nominated nor won the Oscar for Best Actress in 1994 than the crimes committed against her in the movie, Death and the Maiden.Okay, that's taking it a bit far; what happened to her character was unmistakably HORRIBLE, but she still should've won something for her fantastic post-victim performance.And it was a further crime hardly anyone saw this near-masterpiece of a small/indie film that screams stage play. In fact, when I first saw this many years ago, aside from being immediately enthralled in the story and acting of Weaver, my first reaction was this was meant for the stage – and this was before I did find out, in fact, it was previously a theatre production.What we have here, in one of my all-time favorite movies, is paranoid Paulina (Weaver) living in isolation with her lawyer-husband, Gerardo (Wilson) in a South American now-"supposedly" free country. Gerardo had a flat, was late for dinner and Paulina's p|ssed..but it's not clear up front on why.Slowly, but absolutely surely…the pieces fall into place, ever so deliberately on why she's both paranoid and p|ssed. But as bad of a life she makes you believe she has…the past is about to make things a little worst.Gerardo had a Good Samaritan for his flat tire in the form of Dr. Miranda (Kingsley) and upon the doctor's admiration for the lawyer who's about to work for the President on anti-torture criminals – and a few drinks – Paulina's senses go into overdrive. She is absolutely sure the voice and even smell from the other room where she's "pretending to be sleeping" that the good ole doc was her captive from awhile back.I really don't want to give too much away, but suffice to say, she was kidnapped prior to the movie started and Pauline believes this stranger was (one of) her torturer(s). Eventually, she's going to make him prove he did it, or his innocence. One way or another.Literally, I am going to stop here. I've given away only 5% of the movie, and I feel that's too much.This movie, with literally only three actors, plays out in deep mystery and suspense and you will feel every bit of the pain Weaver wants you to. She is an astonishing actress and proves it here. You would need to be in a 3-person movie.The other two, Kingsley and Wilson, were also good, but this is Weaver's show. Her and her character's redemption or potential healing.It won't take too much of your time – it's relatively short, but it will be worth seeing this wonderful movie and you will see past Ripley (Alien). (Actually, a little too much, at times. Boy, Weaver wanted to get naked for this movie…)

Considering that this is a play and rather looks like one, it's pretty good. Well, it's good anyway.A lawyer, Gerardo (Stuart Wilson) and his wife Paulina (Sigourney Weaver) have just retired in their comfortable, isolated house next to a cliff overhanging the sea. The location is somewhere in South America, in a country that has just emerged from despotism and become a democracy. A car has trouble on the road in front of their house. Dr. Miranda (Ben Kingsley) rouses them and asks for help, but an electrical storm has knocked out both the power and the phone.Gerardo and Dr. Miranda are chatting in the living room while Paulina is still in bed. Hearing Miranda's voice, she sits up in alarm, sneaks outside, burns off in Miranda's car and pushes it over a cliff.That, I guess, is the end of Act I. Most of the time we spend with Gerardo and Miranda in the living room. The two men are at loose ends and drink themselves into a cheerfully befuddled state. I can't remember many drunk scenes better than this one. Kingsley, in particular, is given marvelous lines and delivers them as if they were gifts to the audience -- cynical, ironic, high brow, amiable. "I would like to quote Nietzsche in a situation like this," says Kingsley. "At least I think it was Nietzsche. Maybe it was Freud." Gerardo, "If you can remember a quotation, it's usually Freud." The dialog is delicious and matter of fact. The two men are sitting on the porch steps, still thinking Paulina is asleep, musing about where a thief might have driven Miranda's car, and why. "I'm an idiot," says Kingsley. "I'm running down the road yelling 'That's my car!' Of course the thief knows that. That's the whole POINT." Later, when they find out that Paulina has stolen the car, "I mean, what is this -- a regular thing or what? How long do you think we might have to wait? A day or two? A month?" Then the humor dwindles to a palpitating point and vanishes, and the movie becomes echt-serious. Paulina claims that Miranda worked as an interrogator for the now-deposed dictatorship and that he beat, tortured, and raped the women who were his prisoners -- Paulina included. (She's explicit about the techniques.) Gerardo thinks she's crazy. Miranda is astonished and scared to death.Paulina has Miranda tied up and puts him on trial, appointing Gerardo his defense counsel. Some "trial"! If Miranda confesses and shows genuine contrition she'll let him go, otherwise she'll shoot him through the head. Miranda, sensibly, is perfectly willing to confess and get out of this mad house but, since he claims to have had nothing to do with the previous regime, he doesn't know what to confess to. Paulina wants details -- what was she tied up with, ropes or wires? -- that Miranda says he is unable to provide.It's a harrowing movie, with occasional arcs of electricity jumping through it. I'm not certain the ending is played exactly as it would be in real life, but it hardly matters because the acting on the part of all three principals is unimpeachable.I don't want to give away the climax but I'll sum up my impression by saying that it's quite possible to be guilty OR innocent, while still being mad.See it if you can. It's a hard film to forget.