Light Falls Vertical review – startling domestic violence memoir goes deep into past trauma

Enveloped in a sonic cocoon of gentle ocean waves and rustling wind, the sensorial opening of Efthymia Zymvragaki’s feature-length debut could be mistaken for the start of a picturesque nature documentary. Zymvragaki’s film, however, excavates the pain buried beneath such scenic beauty: after escaping her abusive childhood home in Crete, Zymvragaki – now living in Spain – is transported back to her past by an unusual proposal. She receives a confessional memoir from Ernesto, a Tenerife resident with a troubled history of abuse against women.

As Zymvragaki and Ernesto work together to bring his life to the screen, their stories collide in startling, heartbreaking ways. Both grew up under a domineering father who exercised a tyrannical control over his family. The coercive patterns were terrifyingly similar, alternating between periods of cold detachment and violent rage. In connecting the distant islands of Crete and Tenerife with this cycle of sorrow, Zymvragaki and Ernesto’s revelations lay bare the curse of intergenerational trauma.

When it comes to interrogating Ernesto’s own abusive behaviour however, Zymvragaki’s inquiry is on shakier ground. In prioritising Ernesto’s experience, the film is curiously less interested in Juliane, his partner, and her reasons for being with him despite her own experience of domestic abuse. The use of re-enactment to process trauma, moreover, comes off as a particularly simplistic form of therapy. At one point, professional actors are hired to replay a scene of domestic violence; Ernesto even wraps his hand around the performer’s neck to demonstrate what happened. Regardless of his apologies, or the performer’s comfort with the scene, such moments raise crucial questions of safeguarding and exploitation; they are jarring enough to cast a dark shadow over the film.

• Light Falls Vertical is on True Story from 2 August.