Lobo

15, 124 mins

Miguel Courtois’s period thriller, El Lobo, about a mole who managed to infiltrate Eta, the Basque separatist group, in the 1970s, is a gripping and politically fraught drama about loyalty and friendship under Franco’s dictatorship. It’s also based on a true story.

Eduardo Noriega is the hapless hero, Txema. He is a trusted member of an Eta cell. The handsome actor does deceptively little in front of the camera, but oozes charisma, guts and vulnerability.

He is rapidly promoted up the Eta hierarchy. But a failing business and an unhappy wife make him a soft target for the secret service, which manipulate him with bribes and squeezes him for information.

The ugly compromise acts like acid on his self-belief. The fragile maze of conflicting interests is marvellously captured by Courtois with harrowing economy. The political atmosphere and the explosive rivalries resonate eloquently with the fractious struggles of the IRA. Noriega’s rampant affair with a voluptuous female terrorist (Melanie Doutey), who has a fetish for wearing a balaclava in bed, is perhaps too convenient for words. The film, however, deserves to be seen.