Film

The Good Girls

The Good Girls captures a family's unraveling as Mexico's 1982 economic collapse strips away everything they believed protected them. It's a quietly devastating chamber drama about privilege meeting hard reality, told through the fractturing relationships between a socialite, her husband, and their household. For anyone who finds meaning in watching comfortable certainties dissolve.

TMDb rating3.3

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you enjoy slow, observant dramas where the larger historical pressure seeps into a marriage and a social circle, and you'd rather sit with quiet unease than wait for big events.

Skip it if you need a brisk plot or a clear sense of where things are heading, since this one moves at the pace of its characters' private anxieties and rarely pushes forward.

What it asks of you: Roughly ninety-nine minutes of patient, low-key attention, with a tone that stays measured and restrained, asking you to read faces and silences as much as dialogue.

If you liked this

Y Tu Mamá También2001

A panoramic view of class, desire and mortality across Mexico, told with equal parts sensuality and heartbreak. The friendship between two young men becomes the lens through which the country itself comes into focus.

But The sexual frankness and adolescent behaviour might feel gratuitous if you're watching for social critique rather than intimate character study.

Y Tu Mamá También poster

The Heiresses2018

Two wealthy Paraguayan women lose everything and have to rebuild their lives. It's exquisitely paced and resists easy judgment—it finds the dignity and comedy and genuine connection in what might have been a simple tragedy.

But The pace is deliberate to the point of stillness; if you need plot momentum, this will feel like watching paint dry in a museum.

The Heiresses poster

Amour2012

An elderly couple faces decline and loss with unflinching honesty. Haneke refuses sentimentality; what you get instead is the raw detail of how a marriage survives its own ending, or doesn't.

But It is genuinely difficult to watch. The film earns that difficulty, but you need to be prepared for scenes that don't look away.

Amour poster

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The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Holy Smoke1999

Both films track the moment when someone realizes the life they've built is built on an illusion, and what happens when that scaffolding collapses. Both refuse easy sentiment about loss.

Kate Winslet plays a woman deprogrammed from a cult; Harvey Keitel is the expert hired to save her. It's farcical and then it's tragic and then it explodes into something neither character expected. Jane Campion at her most fearless.

But The tonal shifts are violent; the ending will seem to come from nowhere. Some will call it brilliant, others will feel cheated.

Holy Smoke poster
More like this (8)

A Prophet2009

A young man enters prison and emerges transformed—a precise, brutal story about survival and the systems that shape us. The cinematography alone justifies every minute.

But The prison setting is claustrophobic and sometimes violent. It's entirely earned, but it never lets you get comfortable.

A Prophet poster

The Milk of Sorrow2009

A Peruvian woman inherits trauma she didn't live through. It's a magical realist meditation on how violence echoes through generations, wildly inventive in form and visually stunning.

But The narrative is deliberately oblique and dreamlike. If you need clarity and straightforward storytelling, the symbolism will frustrate rather than transport you.

The Milk of Sorrow poster

Burn2019

A slow-burn (forgive it) portrait of two people on the margins—a photographer and a woman he becomes obsessed with. It's achingly intimate and rewards close watching.

But The pacing is glacial and the emotional stakes are small. For some viewers it will feel like nothing happens, because almost nothing does.

Burn poster

Talk to Her2002

Almodóvar explores the strange tenderness between two men bound by the women they love. It's melodramatic and moving in equal measure, with a moral ambiguity that lingers long after.

But The film contains a scene of sexual violation that's played as poignant rather than condemned. It's intentional but will alienate viewers who see it as ethically unforgivable.

Talk to Her poster

Memories of Murder2003

A serial killer investigation in 1980s South Korea becomes a meditation on justice, corruption and the limits of certainty. Bong Joon-ho crafts something that feels both procedural and deeply personal.

But The violence is sudden and graphic. The investigation drags across years without traditional catharsis—some find that brilliant, others just exhausting.

Memories of Murder poster

The Last Dance2014

A choreographer confronts mortality through movement and memory. It's a formal experiment that works because the stakes are genuinely about loss and the body's refusal to obey.

But If you're not drawn to avant-garde cinema or dance, the conceptual framework will feel like a barrier rather than an invitation.

The Last Dance poster

The White Ribbon2009

Both examine societies (or families as microcosms) where rigid hierarchies and unexamined rules create the conditions for moral collapse. Both suggest that comfort and propriety can be a kind of violence.

A village in pre-WWI Germany is plagued by inexplicable cruelty. It's austere, hypnotic, shot in black and white like a memory that's slowly poisoning itself. A masterpiece about how systems of control breed violence.

But It's nearly three hours, entirely in German, and offers no resolution or explanation. The slowness and ambiguity will feel punishing if you need narrative closure.

The White Ribbon poster

The Wailing2016

Like The Good Girls, it's about how quickly authority and understanding collapse under pressure. Both films are interested in what people do when the institutions they trusted turn out to have been illusions.

A Korean detective investigates a murder that spirals into moral chaos. It's a mystery that unmakes itself, asking whether certainty is even possible when everyone is complicit. The filmmaking is virtuosic.

But Nearly three hours, structurally ambitious to the point of bewilderment, and it will actively frustrate anyone seeking a solved case and clear answers.

The Wailing poster

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