Transe (Teresa Villaverde, 2006)

After beginning as if it's going to be yet one more example of "poetic" cinema - cryptic dialogue, a mysterious little boy, ice floes decorously cracking – Transe then becomes a gruellingly realistic narrative about sexual slavery, before combining the poetic and the gruelling at the end. While not entirely evading chilly "art film" clichés, the performances, compositions, and transitions are all, at times, striking and sometimes powerful. After one viewing, though, I can't decide whether the "is this reality, dream, fantasy, memory or something else" territory to which the film eventually commits itself successfully gives a new slant on the material (helping it avoid slipping either into punishing realism or some kind of puzzle film allegory) or ends up serving as an excuse for not having to decide what kind of thing it really wants to be.