Teenage angst with a hint of psycho-sexual drama, not properly fleshed out: That's what you get in this intriguing coming-of-age tale about a rape victim and her obsessive compulsive boyfriend. Although The Hanged Man (the title refers to the game that the film’s protagonists constantly play) never once loosens its grip there is just something lacking in its overall atmosphere, which could have been that much darker and more interesting.
We are first introduced to Sandra and David—played by young Spanish hotties Clara Lago and Alvaro Cervantes—when they’re kids, as David risks his life to impress the former with a bike stunt which turns bloody. Later on in their teens, grown-up David is a sexy, wild and brooding type who struggles to get through school, while Sandra is a loner who befriends the school’s token lesbian Olga (Adriana Ugarte). Just when you think things are going to get hot and bothered between the two girls, director Manuel Gomez Pereira throws in a plot twist where Sandra unexpectedly gets bundled into the back of a white van, taken to an empty warehouse and raped by a man. Out of shock and fear, she (apparently) stabs her attacker and leaves him for dead. When she reports the news to David, he makes her promise not to tell anyone and heads off to hide the dead body. What follows is a twisting tale of psychological harm, obsession and escape.
The two leading performances are thoroughly convincing, especially that of Cervantes, while Lago is likeable and assured as the emotionally tortured Sandra. The film works because of the chemistry between the two leads, certainly not because of the haphazard and confused plot. You're never quite sure if the film is a twisted drama or a straightforward story about the true nature of love—it does rather leave you hanging.