Rock, Paper, and Scissors: Weird Sibling Bonds Propel Creepy Argentinian Thriller

By Thom Ernst

Rating: B-

Rock, Paper, and Scissors is a macabre little tale coming out of Argentina. It's the story of three siblings: brother Jesus (Pablo Sigal), sister Maria (Valeria Giorcelli), and paternal half-sister, Magdalena.

Magdalena (Augustina Cerviño) abandoned the family years before without further word, not even after a failed suicide attempt leaves her father disabled.

After both parents die, Jesus and Maria remain in the family home, living out their uncomfortably cozy relationship. Theirs is the kind of brother/sister bond that family-based thrillers frequently rely on to create an atmosphere of troubling codependency.

Soon after the father's death, Magdalena returns home. It's Jesus who answers the door having lost a game of rock, paper, scissors to Maria. He barely recognizes his half-sister. Their subsequent reunion is overcast with the kind of strained politeness and skeptical enthusiasm that hints at darker issues left unsaid. While Jesus plays the congenial host, Maria scrambles to hide her discomfort in a series of busying acts of hospitality.

Magdalena — the rock in this trio with arguably Jesus as paper and Maria as scissors — presents the always pleasant and fraught-free business of the family inheritance.

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But the caring for an invalid parent has eaten up the inheritance, or so says Maria. Magdalena insists that the house either be sold and the funds divvied up three ways. Or, if Jesus and Maria insist on staying, they can buy out Magdalena's portion.

Although there is a reluctance to accept Magdalena as a rightful heir given her absence, there are no immediate moves to refute her claim. Instead, Jesus and Maria insist Magdalena spend the night, and details can wait until morning. But the next day, Magdalena suffers a severe fall. She survives but is bedridden.

Magdalena believes the fall was not an accident but that somebody pushed her. Jesus and Maria assure her that only her best interest is in mind and that a doctor saw her giving them strict instructions to keep Magdalena resting. She is their welcomed patient. But with her purse missing, her money gone, and no viable way to recharge her phone, Magdalena has no choice but to wait out her injuries.

Magdalena is the captured audience of her siblings' strange behaviours. Maria is particularly odd, with an obsession for Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz and a peculiar attachment to the urns that hold her father's and mother's ashes.

Jesus acts as Magdalena's ally, encouraging tolerance for Maria's behaviour. But Jesus too has ways that might cause concern, including his preoccupation with filming a one-person movie with Maria as the star: a twisted allegorical tale of guilt-driven Dorothy succumbing to madness.

And as banter falls from polite resistance to ridicule, humiliation, and accusations, even Magdalena starts exposing signs of malicious resentments.

It's an understandable impulse for a film of this sort to hold off on divulging secrets, content to fill the story with ambiguity rather than rush to reveal anyone's agenda. But directors Martín Blousson and Macarena García Lenzi's tight clench on the film's secrets feels more like an exercise in prying out a reveal than a steady unraveling of clues and discovery.

And when the reveal finally does surface, it arrives with an unsatisfying clunk, as if the actors were left to scour the set for any props that might serve as a reasonable answer to the weirdness.

The film evokes comparisons to Misery (1990) as though directed by Pedro Almodovar. But the film's direct sibling conflicts with its decades of resentment seems better served by comparison to What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962).

The film’s title, aside from the opening game between Jesus and Maria to see who is to answer the door, serves a practical use in terms of items used in a madcap conclusion. But the title also serves the notion that some games can't be won and are best left not played.

Rock, Paper, and Scissors. Directed by Martín Blousson and Macarena García Lenzi. Starring Augustina Cerviño, Valeria Giorcelli, and Pablo Sigal. Currently available on VOD.