Separated from her husband for more than fifteen years after he is forcibly recruited into the army, a cynical woman grows concerned that the soldier who has returned to her is not her husband as he claims in this drama from East Timor. The first ever feature film produced by the pacific nation, 'Beatriz's War' spends a long time chronicling the history of East Timor and its turbulence during the late twentieth century as it went from being a Portuguese colony to Indonesian invasion before eventually declaring independence. Informative as this insight may be, such in-depth history leads to the story taking ages to warm up. It is over one hour in before the soldier who may or may not be her husband returns, and while the first half of the movie has its potent moments (her outrage when her missing-in-action husband is pronounced dead), the first hour could do with serious trimming. Fortunately, the second half of the film is engaging enough with all her internal dilemmas that the film ends solidly. There is a lot of interest in how only the missing man's wife and sister suspect that something is up and yet it is immediately chalked up to paranoia - "the war has changed us all". His cries that he is "flesh and bones" also resonate with it reaching the point that we come to sympathise with and warm to the soldier, regardless of whether he is an impostor or the real missing man.
Review of Beatriz's War
