The Dose: Darkly-comic Argentinian hospital thriller about dueling 'Angels of Death' walks a fine line
By Liam Lacey
Rating: B.
It had not occurred to me, before watching the mordant Argentinian medical thriller, La Dosis (The Dose) that “bedpan” and “deadpan” don’t just rhyme, they resonate: Keeping a straight face and a tight sphincter both involve muscle control and an element of dramatic suspense.
A dark movie, but also a funny one, La Dosis is the first feature from writer-director Martín Kraut..
Another night, another “act of mercy” for Marcos (Carlos Portaluppi).
The protagonist of Dose is a male nurse, Marcos (Carlos Portaluppi), a gruffly macho, heavy-set middle-aged loner who works the night-shift in the gloomy intensive care unit of a private clinic. The 20-year employee, rarely gets enough sleep in his noisy apartment. But he finds inspiration by bonding with his patients as he empties their bedpans and changes their catheters.
Marcos sometimes goes the extra illegal mile, ending his patients’ suffering with a medically-assisted push over to the other side. (The “Angel of Death” phenomenon is sufficiently widely recognized to merit a documentary series on Netflix, Nurses Who Kill). He works closely with the middle-aged Noelia (Lorena Vega), who may recognize what’s going on, but still treats Marcos with maternal care.
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Trouble arrives when the clinic brings on a new young employee, the smiling handsome Gabriel (Ignacio Rogers). He promptly seduces Noelia and charms the older doctors who manage the clinic.
Pushing himself into Marcos’ life, he also seems to stir uncomfortable latent feelings in the tightly repressed older man. At the same time, Marcos hates him for, among other vices, smoking all the time.
He starts using his day-light hours to investigate the new hire’s past. Soon, Gabriel and Marcos are on to each other’s game: One euthanizes patients for mercy, the other “for pleasure” as Gabriel puts it. As the clinic’s mortality rate spikes, management hires investigators to find out why. Gabriel, a happy psychopath, gains the upper hand over the glum, misfit, Marcos.
As a thriller, La Dosis is no better than mechanically plotted, but Kraut does an impressive job sustaining the film’s distinctively unsettling tone, walking a line between a psychological thriller and work-place black comedy.
The workplace here just happens to be calmly under-lit blue-green hospital rooms, scored to the beep of life-support and monitoring machines, where the bored staff make daily life and death decisions.
The filmic key here is the use of restraint, like those medical straps used to hold patients on a gurney or operating table.
La Dosis (Dose). Directed and written by Martin Kraut. Starring: Carlos Portaluppi, Ignacio Rogers, Lorena Vega. La Dosis is available on video on demand on June 11.