l Castillo is a feature-length documentary by the Argentinian film-maker Martín Benchimol that has been renamed by the BBC for its Storyville strand asBenchimol happened across the castle – which is not really a castle but a huge manor house, albeit one with a Disney-like turret, in the middle of the Argentinian Pampas – when he was making another film, The Dread. He assumed that the Indigenous woman who opened the door to him was a servant. In fact, she was the owner.
Justina and her daughter, Alexia , scratch a living there as the place falls to pieces around them. The little they earn from raising and selling a few cattle, and occasionally antiques from the house, does not finance even a fraction of the repairs necessary. There are holes in the ceilings, blown plaster everywhere and the plumbing – including the toilet – doesn’t work.
But, after a while, this isn’t enough. Viewers can’t live on evocation alone. The sparsity of information becomes frustrating. Questions begin to crowd the piece and the mood of delicate melancholy becomes overwhelmed by the need for answers.